


I Sat and Dreamed at the Foot of Your Bed

by patster223



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Heist, Alternate Universe - Inception Fusion, Depression, Dissociation, Found Family, M/M, Recovery, Suicidal imagery consistent with the Inception universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 01:23:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6174688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patster223/pseuds/patster223
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inception AU where Matt decides that the best way to take down Fisk is to go into the man’s subconscious. But dreams are filled with ghosts and traps that even The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen can’t escape from unscathed. Not without help, anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I first had this idea about six months ago, so boy does it feel good to be finally posting this. Eternal thanks to [softgrungegeiszler](http://softgrungegeiszler.tumblr.com/) for betaing! Eternal thanks also go to [oriley42](http://oriley42.tumblr.com/post/142635954993/a-set-of-graphics-for-patster223s-thoroughly) for making the header and graphics for this fic (linked to at the end). Title is from the song Glory by Radical Face, which is an incredibly Matt song.

 

Matt can’t remember how he got here, and the wooden arm of his chair feels smooth.  
  
For some reason, the latter observation bothers Matt far more than the first. Maybe it’s because wood has never felt  _smooth_ to him. Wood, even polished wood, is comprised of countless, tiny grains that always seem to catch on Matt’s fingers. If Matt concentrates, he can spend hours getting lost in the dips and whorls of a piece of wooden furniture.

But Matt’s concentrating  _now,_ and the wood still feels smooth _._ He worries at the observation like it’s a loose tooth, and presses his fingers harder against the chair as if that will make any difference.  
  
“Mr. Murdock?”  
  
Matt startles, and then startles at the fact that he  _startled._ That…doesn’t usually happen to him.

He gathers himself enough to give a charming, embarrassed sort of smile. “Sorry, I—didn’t hear you coming. I must be getting a head cold; I’m a bit out of sorts today.”  
  
“Hopefully not too out of sorts for your interview,” the person says pleasantly. “Mr. Landman is ready to see you.”  
  
Right. Matt remembers now: he’s here for an interview. He’s here for an interview at Landman and Zack. If only he felt more prepared for it. Simply walking down the hall turns out to be a herculean task. It’s as if Matt’s wading through mud and smoke instead of carpet and air—everything is just so damn  _muffled._

Matt breathes a sigh of relief when he can still hear the flutter of a heartbeat coming from inside Landman's office. At least his hearing isn't completely shot. Still, he muses as he knocks on the office door, he probably shouldn't go out in the mask tonight with his senses like--

Matt’s train of thought screeches to a halt when Landman opens the door and greets him.  
  
"Am...am I in the wrong office?" Matt says, wincing when his voice lilts up at the end of the sentence.

"Matt Murdock, right? Here to interview with Paul Landman? Looks to me like you're in the right spot," says...the person who  _sounds_ like Landman. Matt doesn't forget voices, and he hasn't forgotten Landman's: thin, reedy, with a bit of an echoing croak born from years of smoking. So Matt  _knows_ this is Landman's voice, but-

But it's not his heartbeat. 

Landman clears his throat. "You okay there, son? Don't worry, I won’t ask  _too_ many out-of-left field questions. I leave that for the phone interviews.”

Landman’s lips smack loudly as they stretch into a grin Matt can actually _hear_. Matt winces—Landman is always doing that, smiling in a way that hurts Matt’s ears.

Matt forces a smile of his own. He’s nearly decided to chalk up the heartbeat thing as being a weird artifact of his head cold, but then Landman makes the mistake of adding, "Nothing to be nervous about."

Landman’s heartrate speeds up.  _Lie._

Matt narrows his eyes, only just stops himself from baring his teeth.

“You’re Landman?” Matt asks again, needing to make sure.  
  
“Of _course_ I am,” Landman says in exasperation. _Lie lie lie._ “Do we need to reschedule this meeting, Mr. Murdock? You’re clearly not feeling well.”  
  
Matt straightens. Somehow, this person both is and isn’t Landman. The impossibility of such an occurrence doesn’t seem relevant right now. What _does_ seem relevant is ascertaining what threat this imposter poses to everyone else in the building.

“Oh, I’m fine,” Matt says. “Or, I will be: once you stop pretending to be someone you’re not.”

The man’s heartrate spikes at Matt’s words—screaming _caught, caught, we’ve been caught_ —and Matt grins. He grips his cane tightly in both hands: not much of a weapon, but it will do for now.

And maybe it’s just the adrenaline flooding his system, but Matt can now hear through the cotton in his ears. He grips his cane all the tighter at what he hears: the hiss of wobbling glass, the whisper of creaking wood, the groan of shifting steel—all coupled with the racing beat of Landman’s heart.

“How the hell are you doing this?” Landman mutters. His voice is less raspy, less reedy—less _Landman_ —and low enough that Matt can barely make out his words over the din of the shaking office building.

“How are you able to perfectly impersonate someone you’re not, right down to the voice?” Matt says. “How are you not concerned that there’s apparently an earthquake in downtown Manhattan-”

The floor _tilts_ as if some force has grabbed it by the corner and tugged upward. Matt is nearly thrown to the ground. Landman—or who _ever_ he is—grunts and grabs onto the desk, but otherwise doesn’t react. He’s not surprised by whatever’s happening.

This is no earthquake.

“What is this?” Matt yells over the groaning and shrieking building.

“My worst nightmare, apparently,” Landman sighs.

At Landman’s words, something finally _clicks_ in Matt’s mind. All of the little details that’d been bothering him since he walked into this office flood his thoughts now. This man isn’t Landman. Matt doesn’t even _have_ an appointment with Landman this week.

And Matt can’t remember how he got here.

“T-this isn’t real,” Matt gasps, before the ceiling caves in and-

And Matt wakes up gagging, retching his breakfast onto the floor. Anxious heartbeats, the clicking of computer keys, droning phone calls, the shifting of paper—all of these sounds slam into him with the force of a truck. Between the noise and the stench of his own bile, Matt nearly throws up again.

But amid the chaos of the office building, Matt can still hear Landman’s—or the man who _pretended_ to be Landman’s—heartbeat, so he tries to sit up anyway. The scratchy pull of _something_ in his arm stops him in his tracks. Matt feels along his arm and finds—

A needle. Someone has _drugged_ him. Matt’s a hypervigilant loner with enhanced senses—how the hell had anyone managed to _drug_ him?

Matt hisses as he takes the needle out, but forces himself to take a deep breath, to focus. The chaos flooding his ears gradually thins and disperses until only two voices are left: the ones of the people who’d drugged him.

Said people are _also_ arguing about him, apparently.

“We are _so_ fired,” one of them hisses. His heartbeat marks him as the Landman impersonator. “Actually, we’re pretty much out of a job forever, because there’s no way anyone’s taking us on after this. You did _not_ tell me he had training!”

“That’s because he _doesn’t._ Where would he have gotten training?” The second voice belongs to a woman. She’s kneeling on the floor, hurriedly packing up a…briefcase? It’s shaped like a briefcase, but it hums with chemical heat, whirrs with mechanical energy.

A briefcase-but-not, Landman-but-not. What the hell is going on here?

“He was only under for _two minutes_ before he figured out it wasn’t real,” the man says. “There’s no way he could’ve done that without training.”

“The wood was smooth,” Matt slurs, and wants to kick himself as soon as the man and the woman’s heads whip toward him. But Matt can’t help it—disoriented and sick, he grabs onto the man’s voice like it’s a lifeline, responds to it.

It’s doesn’t matter. Matt can play this up: play the weak blind guy until he knows who they are, what they want.

“The wood was smooth,” the man repeats. “How much did we dope him up again? Bad enough we get the architecture wrong, but now we’ve blown out this guy’s brain cells-”

“The architecture wasn’t wrong,” the woman says icily. “I don’t know why the dream collapsed, but it wasn’t because of that. And he’s only out of it because he woke up before he was supposed to—his brain cells are fine. What do you mean, ‘the wood was smooth?’”

Matt wobbles—still recovering from ‘waking up too soon,’ whatever that means—but manages to make it to his feet.

“Are…are you seriously asking me questions after you may or may not have just ‘blown out’ my _brain cells_?” Matt asks. “I hate to break it to you, but whatever business you’re in, I think it might be the wrong one.”

“Yeah, well, you and my mom are in agreement on that,” that man says. “But instead of owning my own deli shop, here I am, talking to you about how smooth wood feels. Come on, Ka- come _on,_ let’s not stick around and interrogate the guy. We need to get out of here.”

“Not going to happen,” Matt says, nearly growling when the man snorts in response. Fuck this. Matt’s done playing it safe. He’s done playing along. He wants answers, and he wants them _now_.

Matt can’t do much fancy maneuvering when he’s this disoriented, but he doesn’t need to, not in these close quarters. It takes no effort to simply pull the man toward him and wrap an arm tight around his neck. The man squeaks in his grasp, but then immediately stills. Good—he can tell what Matt’s capable of.

“I think it’s my turn to interrogate you,” Matt hisses. “Now _talk_.”

The woman slowly stands from where she’s been messing with the strange briefcase. Her heartrate skyrocketed when Matt grabbed her partner, but when she speaks, her voice is steady.

“Let go of him,” she says, “and we’ll tell you what you want.”

_Lie._

“Let go of the gun tucked in your waistband,” Matt says, grinning when her hand jerks away from where she’d been reaching for the piece. “And I won’t scream as loud as I can.”

“And everyone will come running to save the ‘helpless’ blind guy?” she says mildly. Her heartbeat doesn’t waver at Matt’s threat.

“You’re not afraid of anyone coming here,” Matt realizes. “Which means…which means they already _know_ that you’re here.”

In his shock, Matt loosens his grip on the man’s neck just enough for the man to choke out, “They hired us, okay?”

“Foggy,” the woman hisses.

The man—Foggy?—shrugs: as he can shrug, in Matt’s grip.

“He’s already halfway there,” Foggy says. “We can’t tell him much he hasn’t figured out on his own.”

Turning slightly to Matt, his warm breath prickling hotly at Matt’s skin, Foggy continues: “Do you know anything about dream sharing tech?”

So _that’s_ what that briefcase is. Matt tries to remember everything he knows about dream sharing, about the briefcase—the PASIV—that facilitates it.

“I only know what was mentioned in the leaked SHIELD files,” Matt says. “The technology is highly illegal outside of military circles—which I’m guessing you two are _not_ in.” Matt frowns. “So wait, that was…that was just a dream? But it felt _real_.”

“Apparently not real enough,” the woman mutters.

“And Landman and Zack… _hired_ you to do this to me,” Matt says, his blood running cold. Oh God. Does this mean that they know? Did they figure out that he-

“Well, not you _specifically_ ,” Foggy says, giving Matt a condescending pat on the arm that is currently around his neck. “They do it to all the people they’re thinking about hiring. We go into the subject’s subconscious, do some digging, and L&Z gets all the dish of a background check plus some bonus skeletons in the closet to manipulate as they please.”

“That’s…incredibly unethical.”

“It is that—but then again, so is putting someone in a chokehold.”

“So is drugging someone without their consent,” Matt counters, forcing himself not to tighten said chokehold. He still needs Foggy to be able to speak. “So what skeletons did you find in my closet?”

The sound of lips spreading against teeth as Foggy says, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Matt bares his teeth in return. “Didn’t get much then. Probably could’ve guessed that, since you were only in there for—two minutes, did you say?”

Foggy snorts. “Oh, I like this one.”

“Too bad ‘this one’ is still going to report you to the police,” Matt says. “I don’t care if Landman hired you; there’s no way this is legal.”

The woman’s hand twitches like she’s about to go for her gun again. Matt tenses his legs, ready to leap—but before either of them can do anything, Foggy casually admits, “Oh, of course it’s not legal. But there’s no way you’re going to report us.”

The woman slowly relaxes as Foggy speaks. Matt narrows his eyes, wondering what they’re playing at.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Matt asks.

Foggy takes a deep breath. When he speaks, his words are calm, nonchalant even. He reminds Matt of the lawyers he’s observed in court: the ones who speak to the jury as if they were simply a next door neighbor.

“No offense, but you just put me in a chokehold that looks a _bit_ too practiced for a blind guy with no training that _we_ could uncover,” Foggy says. “You know you’re in a dream faster than _I_ do, even though all you know about dream sharing is what you’ve read from the SHIELD files. Hell, you’ve _read through all the SHIELD files._ The only reason you’d do that is if you were worried about showing up in them.”

“And,” Foggy says, with the air of a poker player about to reveal their trump card, “you asked me what skeletons I found in your closet. Buddy, no one asks about that unless there are skeletons to _find._ You’ve probably got more shit to hide than we do, and you’re not about to call attention to yourself by playing whistleblower.”

Matt grits his teeth. Fuck. He’s gone against weaker arguments than that in an actual _courtroom._

The woman notices his weakness and immediately jumps on it. “You don’t report us and we don’t report any of what Foggy just said to Landman and Zack. Deal?”

Matt tightens his hold on Foggy, but they all know it’s a toothless move—he’s already lost this fight. Matt blames his addled mind—still spinning from drugs, sensory overload, _dream sharing_ —and the absolute force of nature that is Foggy and this woman.

“What makes you think that I care?” Matt tries. “You really think I want to work for Landman and Zack after knowing they hired you to do this to me?”

“Come on, Matt,” Foggy says, and Matt startles at the sound of this stranger saying his name: how easily it seems to flow from Foggy’s lips. “You’re not stupid. You knew what L&Z were the minute you walked in the door. I don’t know _why_ you want to work for them, but I doubt you’re going to let this stop you.”

Matt wants to grind his elbow into Foggy’s windpipe in response but—Foggy’s right. Somehow, even though Foggy was only in Matt’s subconscious for two minutes, he already has Matt pegged. Even in this small interaction—in which _Matt_ is supposed to be the one with all the leverage—Matt’s given up far too much.

The worst part, he thinks, as Foggy and the woman leave him alone with a splitting headache and a drying patch of his own vomit, is that Matt’s not entirely sure _what_ he’s given up.

But no. Maybe even worse than that is that Foggy was right about him. Because despite knowing _exactly_ what kind of slime L&Z are, Matt continues his interview process with them. Matt’s just that _desperate_. Beating up criminals isn’t _working_ anymore—half of them only know Fisk as a philanthropist, and the half that _do_ know the truth know little else that’s useful to Matt. So if he can’t find anything on Fisk as The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, then maybe he can find something as Matt Murdock, Attorney at Law. Sneak a look at L&Z’s files on Fisk, hope they have _some_ scrap of information he can use. It’s pathetic, but what other choice does he have?

Unbidden, Foggy’s words replay themselves in his mind: _All the dish of a background check plus some bonus skeletons in the closet for them to manipulate as they please._

Matt shouldn’t even be considering this as an option _._ He’s out of his depth as it is, even _without_ adding invasive, psychoanalytical neuroscience into the mix. Although…it’s not as if it’d be any  _less_ illegal than the methods that Matt’s already employing.

This is what he tells himself as he beats up half a dozen white collar criminal wannabes until they give up Foggy and the woman’s usual hangout: a bar in Hell’s Kitchen that’d always successfully kept Matt away with its stench of fermented eel mixed with liquor. Matt scouts out the bar for three days before he hears it: the familiar  _thud_ of Foggy’s heartbeat as he and the woman leave the bar.

This is Matt’s last chance to recognize this as an  _exceptionally_ bad idea. Even if the whole dream thing  _is_ a viable alternative to killing Fisk, Matt still has a more ethical route to consider—now that Matt’s passed L&Z’s “background check,” he has a phone interview with them next week.

And then weeks later there will be a follow-up interview, and then— _if_ he gets the job—weeks more of stomaching their joke of a code of ethics as he orients himself to their labyrinthine building, and then Matt will  _potentially_ have access to the files that Landman and Zack  _potentially_ have on Fisk.

No. Matt’s done waiting.

It’s a courtesy, of sorts, to approach Foggy and the woman near their favorite bar—their territory—but perhaps Matt overestimated just how courteous they would feel when being greeted by The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Unfortunately, Matt doesn’t think of this until _after_ he drops down from a fire escape, says, “Don’t run,” and is met with the full force of the woman’s pepper spray. Matt manages to flip away from the worst of the spray, but not far enough away to spare his throat a number of sparking, burning particles.

“I’m not—not here to hurt you,” Matt wheezes.

“Like hell you’re not!” Foggy says, heartbeat racing—he’s panicking. Yeah, Matt really overestimates the city’s good will toward him. At least Foggy isn’t running away: too in shock, perhaps, or maybe just too familiar with what happens to people who try to run from Matt. It doesn’t matter—as long as it gives Matt time to make his case.  

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Matt says again. “I’m—I’m here to hire you.”

The words feel awful in his mouth, and judging from Foggy’s skeptical snort, they sound just as bad. Karen, though, her head tilts toward him—she’s curious, despite herself.

Matt turns to her. “I didn’t set off those bombs or kill that cop. I was framed, and I want you to go inside the head of the guy that did it.”

“And you want us to…find evidence? So you can exonerate yourself?” the woman asks, ignoring Foggy’s not-so-subtle tug on her arm.  
  
Mat shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter what he did to me. If the people of this city think I’m the Devil…fine. But the man who orchestrated the bombings needs to be stopped.”

“And who is he?” the woman asks.

“Wilson Fisk.”

“Wilson Fisk the _philanthropist?_ ” Foggy asks. He stops pulling at the woman’s arm, curiosity drawing him into Matt’s tale despite the protest of his hammering heart. “You expect us to believe that the guy trying to rebuild Hell’s Kitchen is the same guy who blew it up?”

“It’s the truth,” Matt says.

“Karen,” Foggy says firmly. “Can we please leave this alleyway and stop talking to the crazy vigilante?”

The woman—Karen—doesn’t move. “I’m…I’m not so sure he’s crazy. You’ve heard the rumors about Fisk, Foggy. You know he’s capable of this.”

“Maybe. But the burden of proof on this…Devil guy to prove it is still _enormous_. You’re also forgetting the very salient fact that this guy wears a mask and beats people up—he’s a vigilante!”

“And we’re extractors,” Karen counters. “You know that the law doesn’t always line up with what’s right.”

Matt can tell that she’s looking at Foggy, but exactly what message that look holds, he doesn’t know. Whatever it is, it must be convincing, because though Foggy huffs out a harsh sigh, he gives Matt a nod.

“Okay,” Foggy says. “Make your case.”

Matt tells them: about how, when out patrolling, he’d heard the screams of a secretary being murdered in her jail cell—an incident later rewritten to be a suicide. How he’d torn through Hell’s Kitchen until he’d found the cause of her death—a flash drive—and then turned it over to the press. He tells them all he knows: about the Russians, Fisk, the bombings, everything. Or, as much as he _can_ tell them without compromising his identity.

“I’ve asked around about you two,” Matt says finally. “No one knows much, but they all agree that you don’t just break the law. You try to help people: take cases from people like Landman and Zack to pay the bills and then spend the rest of your time going into the dreams of people who really deserve it. You can do that again, here, if you help me.”

At Matt’s words, Karen’s skin heats, her heart pounds, and her sweat sings with adrenaline. But even as her body responds to the idea of taking down Fisk, Karen shakes her head.

“I believe you, and I believe in what you’re doing,” she says, “but I don’t take jobs from people I don’t trust. And I can’t trust someone whose _name_ I don’t even know.”

Matt hesitates. He’s already told them far more than he should have, far more than he’s ever told _anyone_ aside from Claire, but—it’s not as if they’re in any position to reveal his secrets. The truce they made at Landman and Zack still holds. And while a relationship based upon mutually assured destruction and a shared hobby of unlawful righteousness probably isn’t a _sound_ plan, at the moment, it’s all Matt’s got.

“My name is Matt,” Matt says, taking off his mask. “Matt Murdock.”

A long moment of silence, and then Foggy breathes, “Holy shit. You, you’re the guy from L&Z! I can’t believe I didn’t recognize your voice, holy _shit._ ”

Matt shrugs. The movement feels awkward with his face so exposed like this. “No one ever does, if that makes you feel any better. People don’t tend to peg the blind guy as a vigilante.”

“Most people haven’t been put in a chokehold by said blind vigilante,” Foggy says.

His heartrate steadies now that Matt’s revealed his face—perhaps because Foggy now knows he’s speaking to someone he knows how to persuade. So _that’s_ what it means to be a forger. Matt had read the term in the SHIELD files, but now he’s reminded firsthand of the full force of Foggy’s skill set: of how easily he can use his words to sway and influence his marks.

Good thing this guy never went to law school. He would’ve raised _hell_ there.

“We still need time to think about this,” Karen says. “To make sure that what you’re saying is true.”

Matt pulls the mask back on. “You have two days. I’ll meet you here once you’ve made your decision.”

“And if that decision is no?” Karen says.

“Then…” Matt says. “Then I find some other way to take care of Fisk.”

“‘Take care of?’” Foggy says. “The sounds kind of dark.”

Matt knows that they’re testing him, testing his reactions to their questions. But he doesn’t know what they’re testing _for_ , what they’re screening him for. So all he can do is say what he knows to be true.

“I know,” Matt says. “That’s why I’m asking for your help.”

Matt leaps onto the fire escape before they can say another word. He spends the rest of his night scrubbing residual particles of pepper spray out of his mask, all the while replaying their conversation in his mind. Matt’s skin crawls in anticipation as he waits for two days to pass.

He suspects that Karen and Foggy felt similarly, because their hearts practically sing with determination when Matt meets them next. He knows even before they speak what their decision will be.

“You looked into Fisk?” Matt asks.

“Yes,” Foggy says.

“And?”

“And he’s willing to kill an elderly tenant just so that he can buy a building,” Foggy says tightly. “Your story is…Jesus, I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but it holds water. We’re in.”

“But you have to come into the dream with us,” Karen says. “Look, I’m not going to lie to you, this is _way_ out of our league. The only way we stand a chance of succeeding is if you help us.”

Logically, Matt knows that she’s right. But he still finds himself blinking in surprise at the request.

“You sure you want that?” he says carefully. “Even after everything that happened at Landman and Zack?”

“We want you _because_ of what happened there,” Foggy says. “Pulling one over us isn’t an easy thing to do, and we’re going to need all the skill we can get if we’re going to take down Fisk. As a rule, we don’t like to bring civilians into dream space, but—you can tell when you’re dreaming, and you beat people up in your spare time. Pretty sure you’re qualified for the job.”

The sound of Foggy’s voice nearly covers the flutter of Karen’s heart, but not quite. There’s something about this conversation she doesn’t like. But when Karen speaks, her voice is steady, only holding the barest trace of hesitation.

“Before we do anything,” Karen says, “we need to know what you’re looking for in Fisk’s head. Information found in dreams obviously isn’t admissible in court, so whatever you want us to find in there, it needs to be connected to something in reality.”

Matt shakes his head. “I’ve been investigating him for weeks, and I’m not sure anything like that _exists_. Fisk is too careful to leave a paper trail. That’s why I’ve been going after him in the mask, not through the legal system—but no one knows _anything_ about him. If we can get into his head, maybe we can…”

Foggy groans. “You don’t have a plan, do you? You just wanted to go into his head and, what, see what we found there? Look, we _really_ want to help, but that’s not how this works. It took a week of planning just to go into _your_ head, and that was a routine gig! This is…something _way_ beyond that.”

“I know I’m asking too much from both of you, but I can pay for it, I-”

“You’re not listening to me! Money isn’t the issue, Matt, it’s the fact that what you’re asking for is literally _impossible-_ ”

“So what, you went into my head to find skeletons, but you can’t do the same to Fisk?”

“Not when I don’t know where those skeletons even _are_ , and not when I have to find a matching skeleton in real life to corroborate whatever skeletons we find in the dream. And _especially_ not when we have to somehow get those skeletons submitted as evidence despite the fact that the justice system is full of Fisk’s bribed graverobbers…or something. My metaphor got away from me. The point is, what you want from us isn’t possible-”

“Inception.”

It’s Karen who says this, and though Matt doesn’t recognize the word, he immediately hones in on the way Foggy stills in response to its invocation. Foggy’s silence only lasts a moment, however, before he says flatly, “Also not possible.”

“It is,” Karen insists.

“It’s never been done before,” Foggy says. “And even if it can be done, _we_ are not the people to do it.”

“Yeah, well. We’re the only people willing to try right now, Foggy,” Karen says. “And if we don’t, Fisk is going to keep hurting people—people just like Elena and that Union Allied secretary.”

Foggy’s quiet for a moment, but then nods. “Okay. Okay, you’re right. Like I could’ve said no anyway, after what that bastard did to Elena. What’s your plan?”

“I know a guy who can help us out,” Karen says. “We can visit his office tomorrow morning.”

Foggy turns his wrist to look at his ticking watch. “That gives us about…six hours to explain to all this to Matt.”

Matt grimaces. Every time he’s around these two, they make his head spin as they speak so quickly and so intricately that he has to sprint just to catch up. Matt would be lying if he said he doesn’t relish the challenge—but he does _not_ like feeling this lost.

“Explain _what_ to me?”

Foggy sighs. “Explain exactly how crazy this plan is.”

Matt’s lips quirk up into something that almost feels like a smile—a genuine one, not something that’s simply polite or threatening. He’s almost surprised his face still remembers how to make the expression.

“So-crazy-it-just-might-work crazy?” Matt asks. “Or just…crazy?”

“Honestly? Probably both.”

Honestly? As Matt runs along rooftops to join them at Foggy’s apartment, as he listens to the steady hum of their hearts, he’s startled to find a rare warmth in his chest, a discovery: that he likes those odds just fine.

 

***

 

Inception, according to Foggy, is planting an idea in someone’s mind and _praying_ that it sticks long enough for them to do something about it. It’s highly unethical, but is slightly _less_ unethical than murder, so Matt accepts the plan and resolves to later ask Lantom whether mind control is a sin.

If they even manage it, that is. Karen’s contact seems skeptical. Which is fair, since Matt is skeptical of him. From the way Karen spoke about Ben Urich—a mentor of hers, the one who’d gotten her into the business, a righteous journalist who’d used dream sharing tech to write stunning exposes—Matt was expecting something…more.

He certainly wasn’t expecting this cramped office and its thin walls that barely mask the bustle of the news room. The sound of Ben’s hand wiping across his face is raspy, stilted—he hasn’t shaved in a few days, and, judging by the smell, hasn’t showered in a few days either. A weary foot soldier on his last legs as he fights for the Bulletin. Ben certainly doesn’t scream _mentor_ to Matt, not when his first words when they walk into his office are, “No. I told you, Karen, I’m done with all that.”

“It’s important,” Karen says. “I wouldn’t ask this of you if it weren’t.”

“I know that. But that still doesn’t make it okay to ask me,” Ben says, but he nonetheless ushers them in and closes the door behind them.

When Ben sits back down, his back is straight, spine perpendicular to the floor. His breathing is even, steady. He crosses his arms and presumably looks them over—inspecting them, given how Foggy squirms in his seat.

Ah, not just a foot soldier then: a general.

“This your crew?” Ben says, nodding at Foggy and Matt. “Let me guess: forger and…” He sighs. “Please tell me you’re not training someone new on a job that’s supposedly so important you had to bring me into it.”

“What gave it away?” Matt asks, going for pleasantly charming—but Ben isn’t having it, nor does Matt really expect him to.

“He’s polite, but he’s no forger,” Ben observes. “No architect either. So, what is it he _can_ do?”

“Gave you a flash drive on the Union Allied scandal,” Matt says, smile all teeth. He doesn’t like it when people _speak_ about him as if he’s not there. “And-”

Matt takes a deep breath and listens: harried interns trading gossip over the coffee machine, the hunt-and-peck typing of a receptionist who’s still hungover from the night before, and—ah, an editor putting in a call about insurance for a Mr. Ben Urich. The same Ben Urich whose skin smells of plastic IV pumps, antiseptic, and the microwaveable meatloaf that’s served in hospitals. The same Ben who twists the ring around his finger until the slide of metal against skin rings in Matt’s ears.

Matt’s voice softens. “I’m sorry about your wife, Mr. Urich.”

“Matt,” Foggy hisses—ah, Matt obviously spoke out of turn. But it was either that or risk Ben refusing the job, and Matt _can’t_ let that happen. A familiar numbness crawls into his veins just at the _thought_ of losing the thread of hope that inception had given him.

That thought could easily become a reality, though, given the way Ben’s heart is pounding, the way his hands heat as they white-knuckle his chair.

“Karen,” Ben says slowly. “Do I want to know how The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen knows about my wife?”

“She didn’t tell me,” Matt says. “I didn’t even know your name until an hour ago.”

Karen nods. Her voice warbles—out of concern for Ben, or out of fear of what Matt just showed himself to be capable of?—when she speaks. “He’s…he’s telling the truth, Ben.”

“Then how the hell do you know about Doris?” Ben says— _finally_ addressing Matt himself.

Matt smiles. “Let’s just say I’m very good at knowing things.”

Ben doesn’t relax, exactly, but Matt can hear a barely audible hum of curiosity coming from his throat. He believes Matt—always the reporter, deferring to the evidence that’s in front of him.

An honest forger, a righteous architect, and now, apparently, a humble mastermind. Matt almost wishes that he could associate with criminals as fascinating as these ones more often.

“Forger and point man then,” Ben corrects himself. “Karen? I think that you’d better tell me a bit more about this crew of yours. And this job you’re thinking about taking on.”

Karen straightens. “Where do you want me to start?”

“Where we always start: from the beginning.”

Matt barely stops himself from sighing in relief as he realizes he’d just passed a test he didn’t even know he’d been taking. Point man, huh? Matt thinks about the sleepless nights he’s already spent on Fisk: researching the internet, city hall databases, Landman and Zack’s files. He thinks about how he beat information out of people when those channels turned up nothing, how he channeled all his rage into his fists until he finally got what he needed.

Point man....Matt thinks that he can work with that.


	2. Chapter 2

Foggy Nelson is a forger. And while his mother might have preferred that he become a butcher—or even a lawyer, Foggy, for God’s sake—he is _damn_ good at what he does. Few people expect the funny, chubby guy to be a master forger, but that’s their mistake—and underestimating Foggy is rarely a mistake made twice.

Which is probably why Matt is so damn _wary_ of him during the six long hours between Karen accepting the Fisk job and taking them to see Ben Urich.

Foggy understands why. He saw the look on Matt’s face when Foggy outsmarted him back at L&Z: the look of a man used to being in control having that control pried from his fingers by a silver tongue. So yes, Foggy understands _why_ Matt would be wary, but he also knows that this can’t be their relationship for the entire job. Not when the stakes are this high.

“You can sleep, you know. Or go back to your apartment and change out of that get-up,” Foggy says. Explaining things to Matt—and forcing Matt to explain things to _them,_ because no offense, uh, but aren’t you blind?—only took two hours, and that leaves four _hours_ of watching Matt pace around Foggy’s apartment. Foggy could deal with, like, an hour of that at _most._

Matt only shakes his head. “I’ll go back and change before we leave.”

“What about sleep then?”

“No.”

“I’ll keep watch,” Foggy suggests. “Karen’s sleeping in my room, so you know it’s safe to conk out here.”

Matt stops pacing, and for a moment Foggy thinks he’s persuaded him. But then Matt tilts his head, says, “She’s not sleeping. She’s doing something on her computer,” and resumes pacing.

Foggy sighs. Of course Karen is awake. Foggy always seems to attract the ones with enough issues to keep them awake at night. Apparently, that includes Matt too.

“I’m guessing it’s been at least a day since you’ve slept,” Foggy says. “You look like you’re running on fumes, buddy. I know I can only offer you a couch to sleep on, but I’ll have you know that this is the comfiest couch in Hell’s Kitchen.”

Matt’s lips twitch. “That’s not saying much.”

“Nope. But the springs aren’t broken, and it doesn’t smell like bodily fluids, so rest assured that it passes my rigorous standards.”

Matt sniffs, wrinkles his nose. “It smells like Cheetos.”

“Another chit in its favor, in my mind. And now I’m hungry,” Foggy says, wandering over to the kitchen. “Want anything?”

“No…thanks.”

When Foggy returns, he finds Matt sitting on the couch, head tipped back to rest against the cushions. His eyes are closed. Without opening them, he reaches for the box of plain crackers Foggy brought with him. Matt nibbles on a few of those while Foggy works through a bag of Cheetos.

“Thank you,” Matt murmurs after a few minutes.

“No problem.”

Foggy turns on the TV and narrates the early-morning infomercials to Matt, who simply eats Foggy’s crackers and snorts at Foggy’s outrageous descriptions. Ten minutes into an infomercial for Avengers Snuggies, Foggy turns to ask Matt what he thinks about a Devil of Hell’s Kitchen Snuggie, only to find Matt asleep: jaw slack, snoring softly as he cradles the box of crackles to his middle.

Foggy smiles and throws a blanket over Matt’s lap before going to his room.

Karen glances up at him from where she’s sitting at his desk. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Foggy says. He closes the door so they won’t disturb Matt. “What are you working on?”

“Just…looking through our files.”

Foggy walks over to the desk and raises an eyebrow at the computer screen.

“You mean looking through _Matt’s_ file. Don’t worry,” he adds, when she opens her mouth to protest. “He’s asleep. No…super hearing eavesdropping or whatever. Why are you looking at his file?”

Karen sighs. “Because it’s full of red flags.”

“How do you mean?”

“Matt had a social worker assigned to him after his dad died,” Karen explains. “Apparently in addition to his PTSD, Matt had a possible mood disorder, a possible personality disorder, a possible Asperger’s diagnosis…By all rights he should’ve been evaluated by a psychiatrist, but they just brought in this blind coach for him instead.”

Foggy frowns. “Every other extractor in the business qualifies for a diagnosis of some sort. Since when are those red flags?”

“It’s not the diagnosis that’s the red flag—it’s the fact that he’s clearly not dealing with any of it.”

“He’s kind of dealing with it…by using his super senses and ninja skills to beat bad guys to a pulp. Okay, yeah, I can see why you’re having second thoughts about him.”

“But, you see, that’s the thing. I’m…I’m not having second thoughts,” Karen admits. “Is that weird?”

“Trusting someone? Yeah, _so_ weird.”

Karen snorts. “Says the forger who trusts everyone.”

Foggy thinks about the snoring vigilante on his couch, how soft and quiet Matt is in repose, how little he resembles the menace he’s made out to be on the news. Foggy remembers the first time he’d seen Karen’s architecture in action: flowing through a dream like a drawn out melody that’d pulled Foggy in from the very start.

“Hasn’t steered me wrong yet,” Foggy says.

Karen smiles softly and closes Matt’s file. “Let’s hope it stays that way.”

 

***

  
  
Ben Urich and Karen Page aren’t biologically related, but Foggy can still see traces of them in each other’s features. It’s in the slash of their mouths as they talk about injustice, the tapping of their fingers as they contemplate a challenge, the purse of their lips as they study a new acquaintance.

Where they differ—the forger in Foggy wants to put it delicately—is _temperament._ While Karen is busy racing forward, Ben is resolutely tugging at her sleeve and telling her to _think_ about what lingers around the corner.

Honestly, Foggy’s forgotten what it’s like to be around people who think ahead. It’s a nice change, even if it means that Ben is completely unimpressed with their plan.

“You three haven’t thought this through at all, have you?” Ben says. “Otherwise you’d know just how reckless this sounds.”

“But it _is_ possible, isn’t it?” Karen presses him. “Inception?”

Ben pauses. He chews at his lip, worries at the ring around his finger.

“It’s possible,” Ben says finally. “But it’s hard and it’s dangerous, and it’s almost never worth the effort.”

“You’ve read our files on Fisk,” Karen says. “You _know_ it’s worth the effort.”

Karen has brought out the same voice she’d used to get Foggy to join her crew—the one made of steel and hope and righteous anger—and Foggy knows that Ben is done for. Ben probably knows it too, but he continues talking nonetheless—though Foggy suspects that Ben is more so thinking out loud than protesting his involvement.

“Yeah,” Ben says. “I know. But do _you_ know how we’re even going to pull this off? Let’s put aside the question of inception for a moment. We need to get Fisk alone for _hours_ to do this. We need a sedative powerful enough to even _attempt_ inception. And we need to do all of this without Fisk knowing about it—because if he does, we end up at the bottom of the river.”

“I know someone. A nurse,” Matt says. Foggy wants to roll his eyes. Of _course_ Matt just knows a nurse. “She patches up a bioengineering student when he…gets into trouble, so he owes her a favor. I can have her ask him to engineer the sedative.”

“One problem solved out of three,” Ben says. “Look, I’m not trying to shoot you guys down, but if we’re going to do this, we need to think it _through._ Have you even thought about what idea you want to put in Fisk’s head?”

Karen and Foggy turn to Matt. Between their own digging and Matt’s information, they know just as much about Fisk as Matt does. But Matt’s the one who’s spoken to him, who’s heard his words and ideology echo in a room filled with the dust and rubble of Fisk’s anger.

Matt thinks for a long moment. Finally, he says, “To stop committing crime. To leave Hell’s Kitchen.”

Ben shakes his head. “That won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“Well, let’s see, Mr. Devil of Hell’s Kitchen,” Ben says. “Let’s say I tell you to stop being a vigilante. You should stop beating up bad guys and go back to being a good corporate lawyer. You’ve probably said the same thing to yourself half a dozen times. Are you going to do it?”

“No!-”

“Of course not,” Ben says. “Because that’s not how people _think._ We don’t care if someone tells us what to do, even if _we’re_ the ones doing the telling. Your decision to put on the mask wasn’t logical—you did it because you _believed_ in something. It’s the same thing with Fisk--”

“I am not Fisk.”

Matt’s voice is low and soft, but a fierce anger ripples through his words. And Matt must hear how frightening the force of that anger is, because he immediately quiets. He swallows heavily, fiddles with the strap of his cane.

“He’s destroying my city, Ben,” Matt whispers. “He’s—he’s _killing_ people. And the worst part is—is that he believes that what he’s doing is right.”

Ben studies Matt levelly from over his desk. Foggy wonders if Ben can see Matt’s red flags right now, all the ones carefully labeled in the file they have on Matt. They’re all on display right now: stubborn rage, brittle self-control, instinctive _violence._

But maybe the reporter in Ben can read between the lines to see beyond that, to see what Foggy sees: raw, wounded anger and grief that are wound up like thread around the spool of this city’s pain. Because Ben only nods and says, “Then we’d better do everything we can to change that belief.”

Foggy lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “Okay. So all we have to do is find something Fisk believes in more than his ‘brighter tomorrow.’ That…still sounds nearly impossible.”

“Just about,” Ben agrees.

“But not quite,” Matt says urgently.

Ben shakes his head. “No, not quite. But only if we’re very, _very_ smart about this.”

 

***

  
If they could bottle Matt’s dreams and sell them, Foggy’s pretty sure none of them would ever have to work again. Because Matt’s dreams are a world on fire: a kaleidoscope of sounds, smells, and tastes that swirl around Foggy so strongly that Foggy feels as though he could _literally_ reach out and touch any one of them. The scent of diesel fuel would feel cool and sharp, the taste of the hot dog stand on the corner would feel smooth and pliable, and the sound of Foggy’s own heart: surely it would feel like plush velvet against his hands.

It’s not something that’s remotely usable for a job—Foggy can’t spend more than five minutes in Matt’s dreams without getting a headache—but dear _God._ Foggy thinks he could get lost in the richness of Matt’s world.

Another reason why they can’t use Matt as an architect. Dreams can’t be designed for getting lost in. Still, Matt needs to practice orienting himself to dream space, and it’s easiest to start doing that in Matt’s own head. Even if that means that Foggy’s nose has to suffer.

“Could you tone it down a bit, buddy?” Foggy says, sniffing the air. “I can smell my onion breath. From the onions I had two _days_ ago.”

Matt frowns and taps his cane against the ground as if testing for something. He sniffs the air, then opens his mouth slightly as if to taste it.

“I…may have overdone it,” Matt admits.

“Just a bit,” Foggy says. “Remember, you don’t need to put all the little details in there. I mean, don’t be sloppy, but leave me room to use _my_ experiences to fill in the gaps. That way I don’t have to smell my funky, two-day-old onion breath. On the bright side, your colors are looking better.”

Matt beams. While Matt says that he remembers color, his twenty-year-old memories hadn’t translated during his first attempts at architecture. It had taken a couple of _incredibly_ detailed conversations—like, Foggy’s pretty sure that he’s described the color green so thoroughly that it’s now ruined for him—but Matt’s colors had slowly normalized over the next few dreaming sessions.

Foggy thinks about those conversations a lot. He’ll get up in the morning, see something completely ordinary, like his coffee, and think about how he would describe the warm, faded browns to Matt.

“Foggy?” Matt says.

“Hm?”

“You went somewhere for a second. I asked you if the smells are any better.”

“Eh…a little,” Foggy says, shaking his head. “But, given that we’re on a timeline, I’d say it’s good enough. You ready to wake up?”

Matt’s leaning against the brick wall of a building—a version of a shop Foggy’s seen around Hell’s Kitchen, because Matt seems to have trouble creating new places. After a long moment, Matt nods and pushes himself away from the wall.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “It’s probably about time anyway, isn’t it?”

“Yep,” Foggy says, and then a moment later they wake up on opposite ends of Foggy’s couch. Foggy jumps about a foot in the air when he sees Karen sitting on the chair opposite them.

“Shit,” Foggy hisses. “Don’t sneak up on a guy like that.”

Karen raises an eyebrow. “I’ve been here for over twenty minutes.”

“Yeah, well, I obviously couldn’t have known that.”

“Don’t make your apartment the unofficial base of operations if you don’t want people coming and going.”

“Get me money so that we can have an _actual_ base of operations.”

“Nope,” Karen says cheerfully, and Foggy groans again.

“I…” Matt says groggily. He blinks and shakes his head, rubs his fingers together: just generally tries to recover from being snapped from one reality into another. At least he’s not throwing up anymore. “I’ve looked into real estate. For a firm of my own.” Matt’s voice is quiet. “Couldn’t afford it, but—I know a nice realtor, if you’re ever in the market.”

“Thanks, man,” Foggy says, patting his leg.

Matt smiles wanly at him. “We have time for one more?”

Foggy looks at his watch. “Sure, one more before you run off into the night to punch people or whatever.”

“Show him the Penrose steps,” Karen says—ever the architect—and then adds, “and the kick.”

Ever the sadist.

“For the record, it’s your fault if he gets mad,” Foggy says.

Karen laughs and sends them back into the dream just as Matt opens his mouth to probably ask what Foggy means.

Now that Foggy is the architect, only elements of Hell’s Kitchen appear in the dream, rather than the carbon copy that Matt prefers. Foggy allows Matt a moment to orient himself to the layout before asking “How are the senses?”

“Better than before,” Matt says. “It takes a moment, but now that I’ve gotten used to doing it, I can actually feel the gaps in the architecture. It’s just a matter of using my senses to fill in the gaps, and I have my Impressionistic painting back.”

“If we could bottle your dreams,” Foggy says wistfully.

Matt only laughs. “Your next illegal endeavor, perhaps, after the Fisk job.”

“I’m holding you to that, Murdock. For now, Penrose steps.” Foggy pictures the never-ending steps in his mind, grinning when they materialize. “Infinite stairs. First thing I learned when I started dreaming.”

After they begin climbing the stairs, Matt asks, “How exactly _did_ you start dreaming? I mean, how does an honors student who’s been accepted into Columbia University’s law school end up doing-” Matt waves his hand at the stairs “-this?”

Matt’s done his homework then. Given the enormous file Foggy and Karen have on him, Foggy is neither surprised nor offended. He shrugs. “How does an honors graduate _from_ said law school end up doing ‘this’ as an _alternative_ to vigilantism?”

Matt chuckles. “Fair enough. It’s a bit different for me though. I didn’t have a choice but to do this—it’s the only way to get to Fisk other than…”

Foggy grimaces. “Yeah. I guess. I don’t know, though, Matt—no one really gets into this kind of thing by choice. I mean, yeah, sometimes you do, but most of the time it just…happens, and the next thing you know-”

“-You’re climbing endless stairs?” Matt says, groaning as they round the steps only to find yet _another_ staircase to ascend. Foggy can only imagine what the change is like to Matt’s senses. “Do these things _ever_ end?”

“Nope,” Foggy says. “Kind of the point. You tired? I thought you were supposed to be this ripped, hardcore vigilante! What, are stairs just your secret weakness or something?”

“Don’t tell anyone,” Matt says gravely, but the corners of his lips twitch into a smile.

“Oh, no way am I keeping this a secret. Just _wait_ until the criminal underworld hears about this. Sure, The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen _looks_ cool flipping up that building, but really it’s just because he’s afraid to take the stairs-”

Matt shoves him—perhaps jokingly, but _jokingly_ doesn’t mean much when you have vigilante biceps. Foggy wobbles, nearly losing his balance, and Matt surges forward to grip Foggy’s arm. Matt’s side presses against Foggy’s own as he pulls them back toward the middle of the steps.

“I’m sorry,” Matt whispers, breath ghosting across Foggy’s skin. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s fine,” Foggy breathes, finding that he can’t control his heartrate around Matt _nearly_ as well as he can control the architecture of a dream. Foggy swallows heavily, gently extricates himself from Matt’s grip. “I wasn’t in any danger.”

“W-what do you mean?”

“Oh man. I know I’m a total asshole for showing you instead of telling you, but-”

“But?”

“ _But,_ Karen told me to do it, and I’m _pretty sure_ you still owe me for the chokehold you put me in when we first met,” Foggy says with a grin, and before Matt can react, Foggy pushes them both off the edge of the stairs.

Foggy—because he’s never gotten to play that prank on anyone before—wakes up laughing, and Matt—because he’s never died in a dream—wakes up gasping.

“W-what,” Matt breathes. “What was _that_?”

“Karen being an asshole,” Foggy says, placing a comforting hand on Matt’s own.

“ _You’re_ the one who did it,” Karen says. “Besides, that’s how we’re all taught about the kick. It’s easier to show than tell.”

“The kick,” Matt repeats, finally managing to sit up straight. “What, like ‘kick the bucket?’”

Though Matt sounds more than a bit disgruntled, his hand stays under Foggy’s own. Foggy’s not surprised. He observed long before this that touch is Matt’s main mechanism to dowse the flames when his world on fire threatens to burn him.

“Not necessarily,” Foggy says. “A kick is the feeling of falling you have in dreams. It’s a quick way to wake up. Though yeah—kicking the bucket in a dream will also do that.”

“Most of the time,” Karen murmurs, so lowly that Foggy wonders if he even heard her correctly. Before he can ask, she begins packing up her things and says, “I have to go meet Ben, brief him on my progress with the architecture. Will you two be okay on your own?”

“Yeah,” Foggy says. “That was our last dream of the night anyway.”

“Then I’ll see you both tomorrow,” Karen says brightly. “Until then, try not to kill Matt more than is necessary, Foggy.”

“If he keeps eating Cheetos on this couch, the smell might do the job for him,” Matt says dryly, shooting a small smirk at Karen. The moment she leaves, however, the smile slips into something more troubled. “She’s hiding something.”

Of course she is. Foggy sighs. “She usually is. We’re working on it, but-” he shrugs “-I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Trust issues abound in this kind of work.”

“Guess I fit right in,” Matt says lightly.

“Trust issues? _You_? _No._ ”

Matt shoves him again, making Foggy laugh as he’s tipped onto his side. Yeah, Foggy deserved that one.

Lying on his side like this, Foggy can just see the brown of Matt’s eyes glinting warmly beneath his glasses. He thinks about how he would describe that color to Matt. It’s the sort of brown that appears on a cool spring morning, when the sun peeks from beneath the clouds to rid the ground of a layer of frost.

“Does it bother you?” Matt asks softly. “That she’s keeping secrets.”

“Yeah,” Foggy says. “Of course it does. Friends shouldn’t keep secrets from each other.”

“Maybe she means well. Maybe…maybe she just wants to protect you.”

Foggy rolls his eyes. “Stop projecting.”

“I’m not-”

“Yes, you are.”

Matt’s lips twist into a bitter smile. “I guess you would know. You are the forger after all.”

Ouch. Foggy winces, sits back up. “Sometimes I can tell,” he admits. “But that’s because you and Karen are my _friends,_ not because I’m trying to—I don’t know, get inside your head.”

“Yeah, well. You’ve already been there.” Matt pushes his glasses closer to the bridge of his nose.

“Yeah,” Foggy says. “I have. But that doesn’t mean I always know what’s up. Sometimes I like to be told things too.”

Matt doesn’t say anything in response. After a few minutes, Foggy turns on the TV and narrates an awful sitcom to Matt. Matt forces a smile at the appropriate parts, but keeps shifting where he sits. It doesn’t surprise Foggy when, halfway through the show, Matt stands up and leaves the apartment through Foggy’s bedroom window.

Foggy hears Karen’s voice in his head— _let’s hope it stays that way_ —turns the TV off, and heads to bed.

 

***

  
  
Planning a heist isn’t nearly as fun as it looks in the movies. For one thing, there’s considerably less George Clooney than the _Ocean’s 11_ movies had led Foggy to believe. There’s also considerably _more_ bickering, dead ends, and Karen’s shitty coffee.

And it never _ends._ There’s meeting after meeting of nailing down all the little details of the job: how’s the sedative coming along (Matt’s nurse is reluctantly reaching out to her contact, who is maybe also Spider-Man? What is Foggy’s life), where should the job take place (on the plane coming back from one of Fisk’s trips to Asia), how will they get Fisk alone (having Matt beat people up, mostly).

The biggest question of course—and the one that’s leading Foggy to consider just mainlining this coffee—is what idea they want to plant in Fisk’s mind.

“How about we use his girlfriend,” Karen says. She sips at her coffee only to look down in disgust when she finds that the mug is empty. “Vanessa Mariana. Implant the idea that she’d be happier if he stopped committing crime.”

Foggy shakes his head. “Maybe, but if we do that, we’ll have to get creative with it. You saw them together on the news—there’s no way she doesn’t already know about, and probably even _support,_ what he does.”

“Why does that matter?” Matt sighs. “If the subconscious is as powerful as you say, shouldn’t the dream Vanessa take precedent over the real one?”

“Not necessarily,” Ben says. He crosses out the idea where it’s written on their whiteboard. “The cognitive dissonance Fisk would experience comparing what the dream Vanessa wants to what the _actual_ Vanessa wants would be enough to make him hesitate. And we can’t have him hesitate on a job like this.”

Foggy scrubs a hand over his face. Fuck, they’ve been going in circles like this for _hours._

“How about we just implant the idea in his head that he’s a fucking asshole?” Foggy says. “No hesitation then, right?”

Ben taps his marker against his lips and hums thoughtfully. “Not a bad idea actually.”

“Uh. Really? Because I wasn’t being…completely serious.”

“No, but the core of that idea could actually work. We need to make this about self-realization,” Ben says, writing down _self-realization_ and circling it. “The only way to make a man like Fisk change his path is for him to realize that what he _wants_ to do doesn’t align with what he’s _actually_ doing.”

“Sounds like we’re his therapists,” Karen snorts.

“We _are_ rooting around in his subconscious,” Foggy points out. “Just need to start seeing dicks everywhere, and we could be certified Freudians.”

“Wait,” Matt says, shaking his head. “I’m confused. I thought you said that the idea needed to be emotionally significant: like love, or anger. How is self-realization more powerful than him trying to protect his girlfriend?”

Ben turns to face Matt. “Think about the moment you realized you had to be The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen: the _moment_ that thought crystalized in your mind. When you finally realized that what you were doing as an attorney wasn’t enough.”

Matt frowns. And Foggy knows, logically, that once a dream ends, your connection with other dreamers is severed. But right now it’s as though he can _feel_ Matt’s mind brushing up against his own. Foggy remembers just what it’s like to be in Matt’s subconscious, remembers a lingering memory scratching beneath its surface: the barest scent of the polished wood of a confessional booth, the stuttering hitch of choked out words, and the salty taste of tears.

Matt’s fingers tighten against the grip of his cane, and he looks away.

“That,” Ben says softly. “That’s what we’re trying to do here.”

Matt takes a deep breath and, after a moment, nods. “Okay. Okay, that will work.”

 

***

  
It’s one thing to be told about projections—to be told that your subconscious populates your dreams with half-remembered faces and ghosts—but it’s another thing to experience it firsthand: to see your second cousin who lives in France walking down a street that was designed to look like New York, or to see your dead grandmother sitting on a park bench during a job.

Most of the time, you don’t even recognize them. But when you do—fuck, when you do…

There’s a reason some people in the business call them ghosts. Some memories of people are too painful even to dream about.

So when Matt gasps, turns his head wildly, and breathes his dad’s name, Foggy closes his eyes and _prays_ for them to wake up. He knows the sedative has almost run out, they _have_ to be close to waking up.

“I…I can smell him,” Matt says, tilting his head toward the crowded street, no doubt trying to pinpoint the origin of the scent. “H-how—how is that…”

“Projection, Matty,” Foggy says softly. “Just a ghost.”

Matt shakes his head, opens his mouth, but before anything comes out—they wake up.

Jesus, Foggy’s never been so thankful to wake up.

Foggy looks over to find Matt breathing carefully—in, out, in, out—and running his hand along the uneven stitching of the blanket that might as well be his now. Matt’s used it every time he’s visited, ever since that first six hours in Foggy’s apartment.

“I-I used to smell him everywhere,” Matt says slowly, after five minutes of breathing and Foggy waiting for him to become verbal again. “A-after he died. I’d walk by the shitty hot dog stand he liked, or I’d smell my own sweat, and it’d just—it’d be like he was right there.”

Matt wipes his eyes. “I used to not be able to fall asleep unless I could smell him. Slept with his boxing robe for a month before the nuns made me stop.”

“Matt…”

“I’m sorry. It doesn’t matter, it…”

“You just smelled your dad in a dream,” Foggy says gently. “I’m pretty sure that’s allowed to matter. Dreams can fuck you up, man. It happens.”

“You don’t seem that fucked up,” Matt says, brittle grin peeking out at the edges of his crumpled face.

“‘ _That_ fucked up?’ Geez, thanks, Murdock.”

It’s an easy thing for Matt to assume though. Matt doesn’t _know_ Foggy: not all of him, anyway _._ Matt wasn’t there when Karen had to plead _don’t_ as Foggy again and again became too invested in the personas he created for dreams, in the people he was trying to save, even in the ones he was trying to con. Getting inside another person’s head will do that to you. It will fuck you up. But fuck if Foggy doesn’t decide that it’s worth it every single time.

“Karen told me something once,” Foggy says. “I think it’s something that Ben taught her. I don’t know if it’s true, but I always liked the sound of it. She said that we shouldn’t think about projections as ghosts, because that implies that they’re there to haunt us. And that’s not why we dream about people—that’s not what our brain is trying to do when it makes us remember that shit. We dream about them so we can let them go.”

Matt exhales shakily. He worries the blanket with one hand, and places his other on top of Foggy’s—a method of tactile confirmation: _you are here, this is real,_ I _am real._

“I want that to be true,” Matt breathes. “You know, sometimes—sometimes I can see when I’m dreaming.”

Foggy’s sure there’s more that Matt isn’t saying, but Foggy’s _also_ sure that if he asks, Matt will close off immediately: put his walls back up, leap out the window, and leave Foggy alone to watch shitty infomercials without anyone to narrate to. So instead, he simply asks, “Are you okay?”

“Of course,” Matt says, adjusting his glasses.

“…Right. It’s just—as handsome as the bags under your eyes look, man—it kind of seems like you’ve been burning the candle at both ends lately.”

Matt brushes a hand against the skin beneath his eyes. He shakes his head. “I have enough ends to burn.”

“That’s not…quite what that expression is supposed to mean. Wait—do you go out _every_ night? To, you know…” Foggy mimes punching: half-hoping that Matt’s radar picks up on it so that Foggy doesn’t feel like an asshole, and half-hoping that it _doesn’t_ so that Foggy doesn’t feel like an idiot.

Matt shrugs. “Most nights. Fewer now that Fisk has gone public.”

Foggy wants to hit himself as he mentally puts together the schedule that must be Matt’s day. He’s supposed to be a forger, supposed to be Matt’s _friend_ —how did he not notice this?

“So you’re telling me,” Foggy says, “that you go to Landman and Zack, then come back to my place all soulless and sad so that you can practice dreaming with me and Karen, and then you go out and beat people up? When do you _sleep_?”

Matt raises an eyebrow at Foggy. “We just were sleeping.”

“ _Please_ don’t tell me the only time you’ve been sleeping is while we’ve been dream sharing.”

“Not the _only_ time…”

Jesus. No _wonder_ ghosts are cropping up in Matt’s dreams, if this is how he’s dealing with his shit.

“Matt,” Foggy says. “You have to sleep. Don’t go out tonight—you can take my bed even, since you’re so snobby about my Cheetos couch.”

“I’m fine, Foggy.”

“Let’s say I believe that. I mean, I _don’t,_ but we’ll pretend I do. Will you at least _sit_ here for a bit, if you won’t stay the night? I can tell you all about how my mom wanted me to be a butcher.”

“You’ve already told me that story,” Matt says, but he laughs, which is enough for Foggy right now.

“Like you can ever hear that story enough times,” Foggy says dismissively. “It’s a classic. Okay, I can…tell you about how I first got into the dreaming business.”

“Sure,” Matt yawns. “I’ve wondered, you know.”

“I know. Because you are a nosy asshole—don’t worry, we all are. Kind of a requirement in this business. I mean, it’s not the most interesting story. I was almost done with undergrad and had a summer internship working for some sleazy corporate HR department. No money, no prestige—they paid me in ‘work experience’ and suffering.”

“The good ol’ American way.”

“You bet your ass. _But,_ wouldn’t you know it, human relations departments are actually good places to scout for forgers.”

The small smile on Matt’s lips instantly turns sour. He turns to Foggy and whispers, “You were recruited.”

 _Recruited._ Karen and Foggy have a file on Matt, but sometimes Foggy wonders what’s missing from it—what pieces of Matt they don’t even know about.

Then Foggy remembers the joy of finally being _found,_ of his talents _finally_ being appreciated—only to discover what kind of world he’d been pulled into when it was already too late. And he wonders if ‘recruited’ isn’t the right word after all. Still…

“You make that sound like they kidnapped me, Matt,” Foggy says. “I didn’t really think of it like that. I mean, yeah, it seemed weird to me that they took one look at this pudgy, handsome face and thought _hey, he’d be a good con man_ , but I—I guess they were right. I’m pretty damn good at it. And they didn’t give a shit if I used dreams to experiment with gender, and it was fun, and they actually _paid_ me. I was 22, man—it felt like winning the _lottery_ at first.”

“At first?”

“Well yeah,” Foggy says with a shrug. “As it turns out, things are less complicated when you’re 21. Or maybe they’re more complicated? I have no idea.”

“I feel like things have only gotten far _more_ complicated since I was 21.”

“Well, that’s because your life is a god damn mess.”

Matt laughs. “I don’t necessarily disagree, but I take offense nonetheless.”

“Noted…I don’t know, Matt. All I know is that I didn’t like doing it as much when I got older. I wanted to make a difference, and I wasn’t doing that impersonating old dudes’ wives and digging for dirt in their subconscious. That’s when Karen asked me to join her crew.”

“A crew of two?”

“Three, if you stick around,” Foggy says. He knows from the way Matt immediately freezes that it was both the right and _wrong_ thing to say.

“Hey,” Foggy says, trying to ease the tension. “Don’t freeze up like that, it wasn’t an _offer_. Just, you know—think about it, if you want. If I can trust you to do a job like this, I’m pretty sure I could trust you with-” _anything_ “-other jobs too.”

Even that is probably too much, but Matt doesn’t freeze or recoil again. Instead he simply sits on Foggy’s couch and mouths the word _trust,_ and then—after a few minutes—he stands up to take Foggy’s bed.

 _Trust._ For Foggy’s friends the concept might as well be an x on a treasure map: something to follow windy paths toward, to search and fumble and dig and sweat for the chance simply to have—all while Foggy’s waving his hands from the distance and saying _it’s here, it’s right here, we’re right here._

Trust. Foggy mouths the word too, until he finally falls asleep to the sticky scent of Cheetos dust and the gentle snores coming from his bedroom.

  
***  
  


It’s agreed that Foggy—as the forger—and Matt—as the one who actually _knows_ her—should be the ones to talk to Claire Temple about the job. Theoretically, this combination is the one most likely to convince her to go along with their plan.

In practice, it’s going about as well as Foggy would have expected.

“You want me to go into Fisk’s _head?_ ” Claire says, crossing her arms. “From what I understand, that isn’t exactly the safest place to be.”

“Being out here is just as dangerous now that Fisk has gone public,” Foggy says. “Claire, we _need_ another person on the crew, and we’re running out of people who we trust. I understand if you don’t want to do this-”

“If I don’t want to do what? Go into the head of the guy who blew up the boss of the guy who kidnapped me?”

Claire begins pacing around the room. Foggy wonders if that’s something she and Matt picked up from one another during their short acquaintance, or if it’s just a habit they naturally share.

Foggy taps Matt on the back of his hand, a quick _what do you think?_ exchanged between them. Matt tilts his head toward Foggy and then shakes it: _wait._

Foggy sighs. Matt is sure that Claire will help them—and she probably will, if only because Matt attracts people as righteous as he is—but he doesn’t seem to know what to do in the time between asking for her help and her agreeing.

“When I told you that you needed a plan for what you do,” Claire says to Matt, “this—dream sharing thing wasn’t exactly what I meant.”

“I know,” Matt says. “But it’s the only way of stopping him without…”

Claire sighs. “Yeah. Just…tell me this: is this a _good_ plan?”

Honestly? The plan scares Foggy shitless, and he wants to tear the whole thing down and hide under his bed. It’s not as much that the plan is _good_ as much as it is literally the only plan they have that doesn’t involve first-degree murder.

But Matt—Matt, who puts his faith into the oddest things and then fights to the death for them once he does—nods. “It will work.”

Claire looks to the ground, taps her foot.

“Dream sharing,” she mutters. “Jesus. And here I thought that the guy shooting webs out of his hands was as weird as my life would get.”

Matt smiles at her implicit agreement and, Foggy thinks, just because she’s _Claire._ “Are you saying I don’t make the cut anymore?”

Claire rolls her eyes. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that you were trying to reclaim the title.”

“I promise, I’m not,” Matt says. He swallows heavily, bites his lip. “It’s not fair of me to ask this of you Claire. I told you I’d keep you safe, and I’m—I’m breaking that promise right now. But I wouldn’t ask you to do this unless it were absolutely necessary.”

“Yes,” Claire says gently. “You would.” She places a hand on Matt’s cheek, runs a thumb across the skin there. Matt turns toward the movement, pursing his lips as if he wants to kiss her palm, but doesn’t have the right to do so. On Matt’s face is the same look he sometimes wears just after waking up: lost, confused, _wistful._

What did Matt do to make himself like this: a ghost who wanders in and out of Claire’s life like he can’t help but do so? Will he do that to Foggy to one day—will he someday force Foggy to push him away like a painful memory, like a projection to be forgotten?

Claire’s thumb stills against Matt’s cheek, and she slowly drops her hand to her side.

“Okay,” she says. “You already know the answer anyway. I’ll help.”

Foggy breathes a sigh of relief. He hates asking this of Claire just as much as Matt does—for as thrilling as it is to open up the world of dreams to someone, it’s equally as dangerous. They shouldn’t be asking this of Claire at all, not when she’s already done so much for them.

But the thing is, they need her on this job. Specifically, _Matt_ needs her. He needs someone as level-headed and willing to continue the impossible task of keeping him _alive_ as Claire is. Because—though Foggy may be the only one yet to realize this—on the first level of the dream, Matt is probably going to die.


	3. Chapter 3

A week before the Fisk job, Karen is sitting at Foggy’s coffee table and putting the final touches on the architecture plans, carefully assembling the foam models she’d made for Matt to touch and study.

Committing the architecture to memory is a simple task for Matt, as most of it is based off of New York. Still, there’s something… _off_ about the design: is it the width of the streets, the size of the buildings, or simply the foam material? The model foam catches and sticks against Matt’s fingers, snagging on his attention until he finally realizes what’s wrong.

“This isn’t Hell’s Kitchen,” he says.

“Not quite,” Karen confirms. “It’s a mirrored version of Hell’s Kitchen.”

Matt frowns. Feeling his city turned almost literally upside-down—it twists at his gut, gives him an unshakable feeling of _wrongness._ “I thought it was supposed to be Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Look,” Karen says. “I know this is the best way to get to a guy who is as obsessed with Hell’s Kitchen as Matt is-”

Matt bristles. “Fisk doesn’t actually _care_ about this city-”

“- _but_ the first rule of architecture is to not use real places. That’s the easiest way to get lost in a dream. Even _this-_ ” she gestures to the model “-is way too close for comfort.”

Matt huffs, fingers still tingling at the feel of the model’s mismatched streets. He’s about to argue, but Foggy interrupts him.

“Is it different enough for us to keep track of reality?” Foggy says, throwing a baseball back and forth between his hands. It’s a nervous tic, one joined by a wavering, anxious change in pitch in Foggy’s heartbeat.

Karen’s quiet for a long moment as she runs her hand along the perimeter of the model. Finally she sighs, “No. But it’s as good as we’re going to get.”

Matt frowns. Ever since he started dreaming with Karen and Foggy, he’s been perpetually out of the loop. He’s been running to catch up, to learn the terminology and the shifting nuances that every dream contains, but sometimes it’s not enough. It’s like being in law school all over again.

_Keeping track of reality._ Matt clicks his tongue. He recalls ghosts, impossible steps, and the loose, crumbling texture that architecture has in his hands. He thinks about how these days, heavy, dream-laden sleep seems to lap at his heels like a tide rolling in. Is that what ‘getting lost’ means? It doesn’t seem like a big deal to Matt—not when he’s always felt like this, on some level.

But it worries Foggy. Matt doesn’t like things that worry Foggy—and yes, he knows that he’s become one of those things, but he does not know how to _fix_ that—so he nods approvingly at the model.

“I’m sure it’s great, Karen,” Matt says, plastering a smile on his face. “We’ll just have to be careful.”

Foggy digs a finger in his ear. “What was that? Did I just hear Matt ‘Jumps Off Buildings For A Living’ Murdock say we need to be _careful_?”

“Shut up.”

“I refuse,” Foggy says. “In all seriousness…I don’t know about this. The Fisk job is going to be risky enough as it is. And Matt hasn’t even had time to make a totem yet.”

Matt runs a hand through his hair. More terminology he doesn’t understand—and only a week before they’re scheduled to go into Fisk’s head. “What’s a totem?”

Karen pulls out a necklace that she keeps tucked into her shirt: the one that jostles against her skin in a comforting rhythm every time she moves.

“This,” she says, “is a totem. Well, it’s _my_ totem. It keeps me centered: keeps me from getting lost in a dream. I—I don’t know if you can tell, but it’s a really small penny whistle. I made it myself, and no architect but me knows exactly what it sounds like.”

“So no other architect can replicate it in a dream,” Matt realizes.

“Nope. If I blow the whistle and it sounds wrong, I know I’m in someone else’s dream.”

“Same principle for me,” Foggy says, holding up his softball. “It’s a bit annoying to carry around in dreams—I usually just imagine a purse for myself, honestly—but no one knows how the stiches fray but me.”

Matt wonders if _he_ could know. With his radar, he could definitely get the weight and feel of the ball right, but individual stitches—that’s a bit beyond his abilities. He has to admit it’s an elegant solution. However…

“I don’t need a totem,” Matt says. “I can already tell when I’m dreaming. No architect can understand my senses—at least, I’m _pretty_ sure no other extractor has ever been hit with a vat of radioactive chemicals before.”

“Unlikely,” Foggy agrees. “But you should have one anyway. As great a totem as your astute schnoz makes, you really shouldn’t be dreaming without one.”

Foggy pats Matt on the shoulder, and Matt can’t help but lean into the touch. He can practically hear Stick screaming at him for thinking it, but Matt wonders if Foggy’s presence in a dream counts as a totem: steadying, centering, grounding Matt.

No. That’s not fair to Foggy, and Matt knows it. It’s bad enough that he’s brought Foggy and the others this deep into his battle with Fisk in the first place. Matt and Claire know from firsthand experience just how badly being close to Matt’s heart can wound.

“Matt,” Karen says quietly. “Why don’t you come to my apartment? I’ve got some tools there. We can probably finish making your totem today.”

As Matt feels around the work space at her apartment, he has to admit that it’s an impressive array of tools. Karen assures him that it’s quite a standard set for any architect, but her face nonetheless heats with pleasure at the praise. She delights in pointing out to him the different types of wood and metal he can use to create his totem.

In the end, though, Matt simply settles for modifying his cane. It already serves to center him in this reality—he doesn’t see why it can’t serve the same function in another. Karen goes to another room, leaving him with his work for hours before returning to check on his progress.

“How’s it going?” Karen says. Her hands smell like tomato sauce, dry basil, sweet olives—she’s cooking. The aroma permeates the apartment, warm and nearly cloying, but the scent is strongest around her hands. Always the architect, always creating something.

“Nearly done,” Matt says, running his fingers over the handle of the cane to test the small, raised dots now attached to its surface.

“What does it say?” Karen asks.

Matt opens his mouth, then closes it with a smirk. “Nice try.”

In truth, it’s not an elaborate message—it can’t be, not when he’s working with Braille—but it gets the job done: _are you dreaming?_

Not a particularly creative message, but certainly not one anyone else is going to guess either. Matt doubts that even Foggy would figure it out.

“It’s a good totem,” Karen says. “And…a good weapon too.”

“Ah,” Matt says. He runs a hand down the modified, heavier steel length—a blind man’s tool to get around and Matt’s tool for violence—and smiles humorlessly at her. “You noticed.”

“Like recognizes like.”

“You did nearly pull a gun on me when we first met,” Matt agrees.

“Yeah, I’m. I’m sorry about that,” Karen says. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, spreading the scent of tomato and olives. “Not about trying to pull my gun—you were threatening Foggy--”

Matt’s stomach roils in response to the memory; he’s suddenly nauseated by the smells of cooking.

“—but I’m sorry that was your first impression of me. That’s…that’s not the kind of person I want to be.”

Matt isn’t a forger. He doesn’t instinctively understand people like Foggy does. So the only reason that Matt understands what Karen means is because he hears the steady thump of her heart that _asks_ him to understand. He hears her heart, and his chest tugs and stretches in a way that whispers _me too._

“I think,” Matt says, “that you may be in the wrong business then.”

It’s far gentler than it was when he first said it—he means it more this time. Because while Karen Page is the perfect architect—analytical and quick, righteous and ready to take on evil in a reality where she can win—it’s draining her. Matt can sense it: in the sweet tang of liquor that lingers on her breath, in the quiet trembling of her hands when she enters Foggy’s apartment some days. Matt wonders how she came to be in the business: if her beginning was as seemingly unremarkable as Foggy’s was. He has a feeling that the answer is no.

“I-I’m sorry too,” Matt admits. “For hurting Foggy that day. And because I would’ve hurt you too. I never wanted to be that kind of person either.”

“I think,” Karen says gently, “that you may be in the wrong business then.”

Matt can’t tell whether she’s talking about the dream sharing, the corporate law, or the vigilantism. It’s quite possible that she’s referring to all three. Matt can’t say that she’s wrong—but he also knows that he’s not made for any kind of business that would make him happy.

“Maybe we should help Foggy open a butcher shop when this is all over,” Matt jokes. And it _is_ a joke—despite how Foggy’s job offer sticks in his mind, Matt knows it’s not a real possibility.

Karen laughs. “Oh God, he told you that story too?”

“I think even _Ben_ has heard that story.”

“That’d be quite the resume, you know,” Karen muses. “I’m not sure how you’d fit it all on one page. What: lawyer, vigilante, _and_ butcher?”

“I can think of worse things,” Matt murmurs. He’s startled to find that he actually believes it.

“Me too,” Karen says, placing a hand on his. “It really is a good totem, Matt. Just…use it to keep yourself safe, okay? The Fisk job is going to be dangerous, and—and I know you’re willing to die for this, but I’m asking you _not_ to. For my sake…and especially for Foggy’s.”

Matt curls his hand until their fingers twine together, and then he gently lets go. “I wish he wouldn’t worry about me.” _It’s only going to get him hurt._

“Me too.” _I know._

“I’ll keep us all safe, Karen. And…I’ll try to make that include myself.”

Karen nods—she knows that’s all she can ask of him—and goes to check on dinner. She comes back into the room smelling of sharp garlic and sauce, and Matt breathes it in gratefully as he puts the finishing touches on his cane. They both wrinkle their noses when Matt brings out the sharp-smelling paint, and Matt forces himself to focus on Karen instead: the smells of her cooking, her presence as she guides his lines so they’re as straight as possible when he paints.

 

***

  
The first level of the dream isn’t supposed to be designed for violence. Matt knows this because Karen told him so, but, in truth, he mostly knows it because it’s something he can _feel._ The instant they enter Fisk’s mind, Matt’s body hums distantly from the rest of him, as if incongruent with the dream it’s been thrust into. Matt thinks that this is because, while the first level of the dream isn’t made for violence, Matt _is._

Karen knows this—that conversation a week ago wasn’t apropos of nothing—and so do Ben and Claire. Even Foggy knows this, which is probably why he’s muttering, “I don’t like this plan” to Matt while they wait for Fisk to arrive at the gallery.

It’s supposedly not exactly Vanessa’s gallery, but it’s also supposedly similar enough to it to give Fisk a sense of ease. It doesn’t really make a difference to Matt—all of these paintings are just blank canvases to him. The only reason Matt knows that Claire’s subconscious has projected _anything_ onto the canvases is because Foggy tells him as much: describes the bright splashes of color that carefully intertwine to form a tightly controlled elegance.

It’s a bit Freudian for either of their tastes—describing the paintings of a subconscious—but Foggy _is_ in character right now. Vanessa Mariana’s vowels now elongate Foggy’s own, her strong vanilla perfume covers his skin and itches at Matt’s nose. The cognitive dissonance itches worse though: hearing Foggy’s heartbeat in someone else’s body.

“You listening to me?” Foggy says, in Vanessa’s playful cadence.

“Yeah,” Matt says, shaking his head. “Just…”

“Orienting yourself?”

“Yeah.”

Foggy hums. “Better make it quick—Fisk is going to be here soon, and you’re still in your vigilante pajamas.”

Matt reaches a hand to his face and sure enough: there’s the mask. “Oh.”

“Here, I can show you how to change. Just-” Foggy touches his shoulder with Vanessa’s hand, and Matt nearly cringes away before remembering that it’s still technically Foggy’s. “Focus on my touch. Imagine how you _feel_ when you wear a suit: in control, poised, professional.”

Matt takes a deep breath: remembers the powerful _clack_ of dress shoes on tile, the comforting texture of his suit’s sleeves, the delicate silk of a tie. He lifts his hand again and finds the mask gone—though Foggy’s hand remains on his sleeve.

“Very good,” Foggy says. “But you should definitely go hide now—Fisk is here.”

Yes. Matt can hear Fisk’s heartbeat, can sense the mass of his form. Matt’s hands tremble as he tucks himself into the corner of the gallery. Out of sight, but still close enough to monitor Foggy—which Matt’s kind of doing a shit job of. By the time blood has stopped pounding in Matt’s ears, Foggy’s already moved past pleasantries and is onto planting seeds in Fisk’s mind.

“Wilson,” Foggy tuts. “You’re not wearing your cuff links. What happened to them?”

A pause, the whisper of fingers sliding against an empty sleeve, and then a startled sound from Fisk.

“I…must have left them at home,” Fisk says. “I apologize, Vanessa—I must seem terribly underdressed for the occasion.”

Foggy laughs, probably going for a _oh, darling, you’re so funny_ chuckle, but more so landing on a _wow, you could probably wrap your entire hand around my throat_ titter.

“Foggy,” Matt groans under his breath.

Foggy begins speaking. This is for the best, as Matt is beginning to realize that it’s the act of speaking and not mimicry that has earned Foggy his reputation as a forger.

“Don’t worry, Wilson. It’s just a gallery opening,” Foggy says easily. “Besides, the clientele here tonight _probably_ aren’t people you’ll need donations from.”

That is because this is Claire’s dream, and the ‘clientele’ here are all her projections: neighbors, people she’s cared for in the ER, people she’s grown up with. None of _them_ fit into Fisk’s ‘better tomorrow,’ and it’s with bitterness that Matt notes how quickly Fisk is to hum in agreement with Foggy.

Foggy engages in a few more minutes of banal conversation with Fisk. Every second of it is both odious _and_ tedious, and Matt breaths a relieved sigh when Foggy finally interrupts himself to say, “Are you _still_ thinking about the cuff links?”

And while Fisk probably wasn’t before, he surely is now. “I…”

“Come on. Let’s go home and get them. It’s no trouble, Wilson. I can tell how naked you feel without them,” Foggy teases.

_Ugh._ Matt ditches them ahead of schedule, confident that Foggy can lead Fisk out of the gallery without his intervention. Once outside the building, Matt listens to the cars parked near the curb until he hears one that hums with music, hums with…Queen? _Ugh_ again.

“I hate disco,” Matt grumbles, sliding into the passenger seat.

Claire laughs. “I guess I’ll have to revoke your title of dancing queen,” she says dryly. “Wonder if Foggy will want it?”

“Please don’t ask Foggy that,” Matt says, because he’s very confident that Foggy _will_ want it and will then start playing disco music whenever Matt’s around. Matt prefers their infomercials, thank you very much.

“Bet he’s a great dancer. Maybe after tonight we can ask Fisk to confirm.”

Matt squeezes his knees with a white-knuckle grip, nearly tastes bile. When he reaches up, the mask covers his face again. Well. He’d needed to change into it again anyway. “Not funny.”

“No,” Claire sighs. “It’s not. Not much of this is, honestly.”

Matt doesn’t have a response to that. Instead, he asks, “Where’s Karen? I thought she was supposed to be here.”

“She’s prepping the warehouse with Ben. Says she’ll be back soon.”

Matt nods. After a few more minutes of waiting, he inclines his head toward the building and says, “They’re leaving now. Get ready to tail them.”

“On it.”

Matt groans as they peel out into the street. Claire—while technically able to drive—doesn’t have a license, and car sickness is unfortunately a constant even in dreams.

“It would be faster for me to take the rooftops,” Matt points out for probably the fourth time since this part of the plan was conceived.

“You running around on rooftops and punching people would _also_ alert my subconscious that there’s something wrong in the dream,” Claire says reasonably. “And we don’t want _that_ to happen ahead of schedule.”

Ah, _that_ part of the schedule. Matt can practically hear Foggy wincing at the thought of that particular stage of the plan, even from here. Matt can’t say he’s terribly fond of it either.

“I should be the one to take him,” Matt says.

Claire glances at him—and exactly what expression is on her face, Matt will never know, is _unable_ to know, but he can hear teeth against skin as she bites her lip, can taste her sweat as she says, “And you would probably get yourself killed going up against Fisk like that.”

“You don’t know that.”

“And? Neither do you. God, Matt. Sometimes…sometimes I really hate that you asked me to be here.”

Matt bows his head. “I…I know. It’s too dangerous, and I shouldn’t have-”

“Screw dangerous,” Claire says. In his world on fire, Claire’s knuckles burn white-hot from where they grip the steering wheel. “Matt, I’m _worried_ about you.”

“What?” Matt laughs, and the sound is harsh, ugly to his own ears. “That I’m going to die?”

“…Yeah,” Claire says. “And I wish you would be too. But I’m also worried that…that you’re letting people into your head right now without fully understanding what that _means_. That all this— _dreaming_ shit is going to hurt you, and that you even won’t realize it until it’s too late.”

“You said the same thing about me wearing the mask,” Matt says softly. “About me getting hurt doing that.”

“Yeah, well—it’s true.”

Matt doesn’t precisely have a counterargument. Maybe Claire has never even been in his subconscious before this, but she doesn’t _need_ to have been. Claire has nurse’s hands: precise, careful instruments that know exactly where Matt bleeds best, that know how to cut just as well as they know how to heal. Matt’s going to get hurt doing this, and Claire knows it just as well as he does.

“We’re here,” Claire says finally. She places a gentle hand on Matt’s knee. “ _Please_ stay safe. Don’t piss Foggy off by getting too badly injured.”

“And what about you?” Matt says with a grin. It almost feels like their early conversations: light and easy the way they’d been before Matt’s blood and vengeance had come between them.

“If I got pissed off every time you got injured, I don’t think we’d have ever become friends,” Claire says easily. “Now go.”

_Friends._ It seems awful of Matt to make her worry this much if that’s what they are. He turns the word over in his mind, guilt churning in his stomach as he enters the building and situates himself on the landing below Fisk’s penthouse.

Matt curses as he realizes he cut his entrance way too close for comfort—Foggy and Fisk are already inside the penthouse and talking.

“Why did you stop wearing them anyway?” Foggy is saying. “I thought you said they reminded you of your father.”

“I…did?” Fisk says.

He didn’t, actually. Matt’s not even sure if Fisk _wears_ cuff links. But Fisk _did_ have an abusive father, and in something as malleable as dream space, Foggy is free to _suggest_ to Fisk that he project all his feelings of hatred and inadequacy onto a pair of non-existent cuff links.

Matt has recently begun to question whether dream sharing is, in fact, more ethical than vigilantism. He’s inclined to say no—but then again, he is a bit biased.

“Yes,” Foggy says, heartrate spiking for a moment, then settling as Fisk apparently accepts the lie. “You told me they were a reminder: that you’re not cruel for the sake of cruelty. You left them in the safe, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Fisk says. A shuffle of footsteps indicates that he’s walked over to an empty, echoing spot in the wall that must be a wall safe. Four differently pitched _beeps,_ and the safe slides open—

And now it’s time for the part of the plan that none of them have been looking forward to. The world sways beneath Matt’s feet, knocking him against the wall as Foggy re-imagines this world, re-constructs its architecture according to Karen’s instructions. Streets shift and groan beneath them, reaching up into the sky, twisting and turning until—to Matt’s senses—the denizens of Hell’s Kitchen appear to be at the bottom of a valley made up of steel and glass. The valley constricts the city, constricts _Matt_ as if the city itself were wrapping steel bands around his chest. He—he can’t _breathe._ He barely registers the occupants of the building leaving their apartments and running for Fisk’s apartment until he hears Foggy cry out, “Wilson!”

_Foggy._ Matt pounds a fist against his chest, forces himself to fucking _breathe_ , and sprints for the landing with his head still spinning and his lungs still tight.

Foggy has been pulled out of Fisk’s penthouse by the projections. He’s being mobbed by bodies whose heat and anger flash in Matt’s senses like roaring flames. Other projections barricade the door, ignoring Fisk’s cries. They don’t care about Fisk—all they care about is Foggy. Because while Fisk may not have noticed a disturbance in the dream space, Claire’s subconscious _had_ : and her projections want its source _gone._

Matt’s still gasping for breath, but he doesn’t need it—doesn’t need air right now. He has his fists and he has his anger: all else is secondary. Matt throws himself onto the projections, pulling them off of Foggy in feral lunges of his own body, striking them with elbows, fists, and feet until they go down. Matt’s mind spins, his senses sway, his punches meet blood and teeth: and at the center of all of it is Foggy’s racing heart.

“Took you long enough,” Foggy hisses when the last projection goes down—but the splintering of Fisk’s penthouse door interrupts any retort Matt might’ve made.

“Move!” Matt whispers, ushering Foggy down the steps. Matt can hardly speak at all with what little oxygen is available to him right now, and he stumbles on every other step, but none of that matters while Fisk’s roars echo behind them. They enter onto the street and throw themselves into the backseat of Claire’s car. Matt barely registers his motion sickness as they move: too busy just trying to _breathe._

“What’s wrong with him?” Karen demands from the seat next to his, her heartrate skyrocketing, and Matt remembers _I know you’re willing to die for this, but I’m asking you not to._

He’s not trying to. He promises he’s not trying to.

“I think he got banged up pretty badly by those projections,” Foggy says, hands fluttering uselessly above Matt’s body. Except they’re _Vanessa’s_ hands, not Foggy’s, and it’s _wrong wrong wrong_ that they’re so close to him _._ “I don’t get it, I thought he’d be able to take them. What the hell is your subconscious, Claire?”

“If I knew, it wouldn’t be a subconscious,” Claire says. “Was Matt’s fighting any different? Was he off balance at all?”

“Y-yeah, I guess-”

“Probably just disoriented from the change in architecture,” Claire says. “Foggy, hold his hand, give him something to focus on. He’ll be fine—he just needs time to calm down.”

Foggy’s hand—and now it _is_ Foggy’s hand, large and calloused—presses against Matt’s. It’s solid, warm, _real,_ and Matt’s lungs finally begin to fill with more than just empty air.

“How’s the plan?” Ben asks tightly. He’s sitting in the passenger’s seat—something Matt’s only just become aware of now that his senses have begun to stabilize.

Foggy nods. “Still good. Fisk thinks that Vanessa has been kidnapped and is probably tracking us down as we speak. I can’t believe I’m saying that like it’s good news.”

“I still think we should have taken Fisk directly,” Matt croaks. “Or I should have been the one to take you. You shouldn’t have been put in danger like that.”

“Yeah, well—you protected me, didn’t you?” Foggy says, squeezing his hand. “And this way he thinks it’s all of Hell’s Kitchen who’s against him and not just a loser in a mask—makes the final idea stronger. Besides, do you really think you could have _kidnapped_ someone who can literally deadlift you?”

“First time for everything,” Matt says, nearly managing a smile in Foggy’s direction.

Foggy’s fingers brush against the hair at the nap of Matt’s neck. Matt closes his eyes, sighs—he can breathe again. Matt desperately wants to stay in this moment—breathe and live and maybe even die in it—but then he hears, from outside the car-

“We have company,” Matt says, dragging himself upright and away from Foggy’s touch. “There’s two—no, three people behind us, jumping from car to car to catch up. Fisk’s defenses?”

Karen hisses as she glances back. She pulls out a gun from—somewhere. It’s hazy to Matt’s senses, and, despite Karen’s efforts, he’s never understood how to map out the shifting space and geography of dreams. “Yep. And they’re militarized. Fisk has had training.”

“Militarized?” Claire says. “It’s my dream, how can his projections even be here in the first place?”

“Anyone can bring anything into a dream,” Ben reminds them. “That includes the gun Karen just pulled out and—if your subconscious feels under attack like Fisk’s does _right now_ —that can include a whole artillery.”

Ghosts and guns and entire armies—apparently these are the things that dreams are made of. One of these days, Matt is going to admit that he’s _way_ out of his depth, but that day is probably not today. Matt scrambles for the latch to the sunroof, but he’s only barely got his breath back, and his fingers are clumsy against the mechanism.

“Let me,” Karen says, pushing Matt’s hand aside and sliding the sunroof open. “I’m the one with the ranged weapon anyway.”

Matt grimaces, but knows she’s right—he can barely unfold his cane in a space this cramped, let alone fight. Matt’s sprawled awkwardly, body tense and coiled as he tracks the defenses moving outside the car. He nearly cries out when Karen begins opening fire, the echoing gunshots reverberating painfully around the enclosed space.

“Shit,” Foggy says. “How much farther to the warehouse?”

“Nearly there. It’ll be tight, but we came prepared for Fisk’s defenses,” Ben says. “We knew Fisk’s mind wouldn’t be unprepared for something like this.”

Matt hears a shout as one of Karen’s bullets connect, and then one projection out of three is lost to Matt’s senses. His ears ring as Karen shoots again—this time the bullets are heavier, shot with a lower-pitched sort of _thud._ She’s brought out a bigger gun, for all the good that it’s going to do them right now.

Foggy is able to actually see all of this happen. And seeing the action must be even worse than hearing it, because Foggy is quick to shake his head at Ben’s words. “We were not prepared for _this_ , Ben. We knew Fisk would have defenses, but we didn’t think he’d had a god damn ninja _army_.”

Matt frowns. “Wait, they’re ninja? That’s—I thought Fisk was a white guy?”

“Says the only white ninja on this damn team,” Claire says.

Even if Matt did have a foot to stand on there, he wouldn’t be able to respond to Claire anyway. He’s too busy clinging to his seat and trying to track two projections—no, only one now, Karen’s shot another—from inside a moving car, all while Karen’s gunshots crack loudly above him. Matt hates this—his body at rest, stationary and useless while things crumble to pieces around him.

Matt starts at the warmth of Foggy’s hand brushing up against Matt’s knee. He gratefully latches onto the sensation, using it to center himself until-

_Crack._ The back window splinters as something metal hits, and Matt growls. That’s _enough._

Matt grabs Karen’s legs and pulls her back into the car—just in time for a flash of metal and movement to narrowly miss hitting her.

“W-what was-” Karen says, but then Matt hears another _whoosh_ of air and pushes both her and Foggy down, covering their bodies with his own. And then the back window _shatters._

Matt remembers the time he broke a glass cup when he was at the orphanage. He remembers the tinkling of broken glass that was drowned out by the hot shame that flowed through his gut and the scalding words of Sister Mary. This is that: cranked up to a hundred. Matt’s skin burns where the glass hits, but the sound is what hits him hard, not the pain—it’s never the pain that gets him.

As soon as the glass has settled, Matt carefully pushes himself off of Foggy and Karen. He heaves his body upward until he’s half out of the sunroof. He unfurls his cane and, with a snap of his wrist, strikes with it at the remaining ninja who’s now on the car next to them. It’s a clear shot—they fall, and Matt is left in the relative silence of New York traffic.

Matt wants to take a moment to breath in the night’s cool breeze, but thanks to the twisting shortcuts of Karen’s architecture, it’s less than a minute before they reach the warehouse. Once they arrive, Matt crawls out of the car through the sunroof, wiping the glass off his body before easing himself to the ground.

He exhales a sigh of relief when he smells only a hint of blood as the others pile out of the car and into the warehouse. They all have cuts and scrapes, but no one is seriously injured.

“Time for plan B,” Foggy says. “Fisk’s projections aren’t just militarized—they’re _angry_. They’re feeding off of his rage, and that makes them way more dangerous than we thought they’d be. We need to think of some alternative options or else we’ll have to survive a whole wave of those projections before Fisk even gets here.”

“ _What_ alternative options?” Ben asks, crossing his arms. “We knew this was coming. We just need to stick to the plan-”

“The _plan_ nearly got us killed back there,” Claire points out. “In my line of work, you don’t push on ahead when something is going this wrong. That’s how you get people killed.”

“She’s right,” Foggy says. “Look, I’ve been on violent jobs and jobs that have gone wrong, but this—this is something else. It’d be one thing to press on if this were just an ordinary gig, but we’re not going to _make_ it to the second level of the dream if this keeps up. We need to at least consider pulling out.”

Foggy—in that deft shifting of space that snares at Matt’s senses—pulls a gun from nowhere, and Karen yells, “Don’t!”

Her voice reverberates in the empty warehouse, and her heart—her heart _screams_ in Matt’s ears. Matt’s never heard it beat this quickly and this loudly before: not while lying, not while she was shooting the projections, _never._

“ _Most of the time_ ,” Matt says, putting the pieces together before Foggy can—because, despite the fact that Foggy is a con man, this kind of subterfuge simply wouldn’t have occurred to him. Not coming from his friends. “When Foggy told me that dying in a dream wakes you up, you said _most of the time._ This—this isn’t one of those times, is it?”

Ben’s heartbeat joins the cacophonous din of anxiety that blankets the room. “Karen, I thought you _told_ them.”

Karen shakes her head. “I…”

“It’s the sedative,” Claire says quietly. Her voice doesn’t waver—she knew about this, or at least parts of it. “The sedative needed to be powerful enough to sustain three levels of a dream, and it is. But that also means that it’s too potent to let us wake up if we give up the ghost here.”

Ben sighs. His blood sugar, blood pressure—all out of whack even before this started, but now they sound like a wavering cry to Matt’s senses. Ben is _tired._ Tired, and there’s still two more levels of dreaming to go.

“Our brains are too immersed in the dream to accept death as a kick,” Ben says. “They would think we’re actually dead—send us off into uncharted dream space.”

“Limbo,” Foggy breathes. A word Matt’s heard from Foggy before, whispered about like a ghost story. But dreams are the place where ghosts are made real, so maybe that’s why Matt feels no surprise at Ben’s words.

Foggy, however, clearly does. He turns to Karen. His voice shakes from the fear and anger that—to Matt’s smell and touch and taste—rise like smoke from his skin. “So if we die in a dream, we die in real life—and you just decided not to tell us that?”

“Foggy, I-I didn’t-”

“No, no ‘didn’t!’” Foggy yells. The smoke of his outrage nearly fills the room now, making Matt want to gag with its stench. “No excuses! There’s no _excuse_ for this, Karen.”

“I’m not _making_ an excuse, I know it wasn’t okay, but-”

“But what? What reason could you possibly have not to let us know that if we die here, our bodies will end up vegetables! What _reason_ , Karen?”

“Because you didn’t like the plan!” Karen cries. She covers her mouth with a shaking hand, and her words are nearly muffled when she speaks again.

“And…and you were right not to,” she says. “The plan is dangerous and stupid, and you deserve something better than that, but Foggy—there _was_ nothing better. So yeah, I guess screw me for trying to protect you from that.”

Foggy swallows heavily, and the sound of it rings like a gunshot in Matt’s ears.

“Yeah, screw you,” Foggy chokes out. “Because that’s a shitty reason for not trusting me. You’re damn straight I didn’t like this plan. We’re up against militarized defenses, we’re using _real places_ as architecture, we’re going to let Fisk _know_ he’s dreaming—and now we don’t even have an emergency exit? Fuck, of course I didn’t like the plan! Karen, we can’t…we can’t _do_ this. We can’t take down Fisk if we end up destroying ourselves in the process.”

But they _can—_ and that is the thing that Foggy will never understand. Karen does, to a degree, and it is something that Matt knows with every bone and cell in his body. Matt knows it’s true, because he is so used to destroying himself that it’s hard for him to even imagine another way of doing things.

Matt doesn’t know if it’s something that Ben knows too, but it’s him who finally breaks the silence that blankets the warehouse.

“Foggy,” Ben says softly. “This isn’t fair to you, and I’m sorry. But we don’t have time for this.”

Distant footsteps and the whisper of metal against cloth echoes in Matt’s ears, and Matt nods. “Ben is right. Fisk’s men are on their way, and Fisk is going to be right behind them.”

Foggy nods tightly. “Fine. Let’s…try not to die then.”

“That’s the plan,” Ben agrees.

Specifically, the plan involves everyone hovering near the windows to shoot who they can while Matt takes care of everyone who gets into the warehouse. That’s another reason why Foggy doesn’t like the plan: it involves Matt fighting off over a dozen foes, now with nothing to save him if the effort proves fatal.

But Matt doesn’t need saving: never has. When the storm comes—when projections crash through windows in a rain of glass and momentum, when the near-silent _pit-pat-pit_ of the leaking roof gives way to roars of gunshots and cries of pain—Matt is a flurry of anger and movement, hitting people with cane and fists until they stay down. Whether Foggy likes it or not, this was the part of the plan that was always guaranteed to work, because this is what Matt _does:_ fight, _fight,_ fight until he can’t get up—and then fight some more anyway.

In real life, this works well for Matt, despite what Claire might say. But this is dream space, where Matt is perpetually off-balance even when he _doesn’t_ have four friends and half a dozen foes to keep track of.

He doesn’t even realize that something is wrong until he smells the blood. It burns at his nose, but not as much as the scent that accompanies it does: lilies and charred toast, the scent that always followed her around.

_Elektra._ She’s slipping a three-pointed blade neatly out of Ben’s back. Ben gasps, sputters and chokes on blood, and in the background: Elektra’s tightly controlled breaths, steady as a drum.

_Anyone can bring anything into a dream._ And somehow Matt has brought _her._ Brought her along in his fucked up brain, and now Ben is-

Matt roars and swings his cane until it hits the kneecaps of the only two projections still standing. He doesn’t check to see whether they stay down, only yells, “Claire, help Ben!” and runs after Elektra as she slips away.

It’s not much of a chase. Matt reaches the rooftop in a few easy leaps, and the scent of lilies and charred toast already awaits him there.

“It’s good to see you again,” Elektra says. Her vowels are smooth and rich, a melody that Matt’s never quite been able to get out of his head.

Matt’s hands shake. This could be an exact portrait of the last time they saw each other: standing across a rooftop from one another the day before Elektra left for some other school, some other life. A life without Matt. She’s about to leave him again.

But this isn’t—no, this _isn’t_ that moment. That happened a long time ago. This isn’t _real._

“Why are you here?” Matt manages. “Why would you do that to Ben?”

Elektra clicks her tongue in thought: a tic she’d developed in their college debate class, something she’d do right before pointing out the holes in someone’s argument.

“You’re blaming me,” Elektra says, “for what happened to Ben when _you’re_ the one who brought me here. That’s not fair to me, Matthew.”

She’s not wrong. Of course she’s not wrong—guilt is an old friend of Matt’s, and he knows that familiar twist in his stomach when he feels it. He knows this is his fault.

“I didn’t mean to,” Matt mumbles. “I-I don’t—I haven’t seen you in years. _Why_ are you here?”

Elektra walks toward Matt until only a few inches separate them both. She leans in close to him, her long hair tickling at his ear. And maybe projections aren’t meant to be ghosts, but how could she be anything but? How could Matt’s tight, aching chest and trembling hands be symptoms of _anything_ but a haunting?

“I’m here because,” Elektra says to him, “you think that burying your ghosts means that they’re not still inside you. And who do you think is going to suffer for that?”

Claire. Ben. Foggy and Karen. Elektra, once upon a time, when he couldn’t let go of vigilance and lies long enough to convince himself that he deserved her.

Elektra presses the point of her sai lightly against his chest, and Matt closes his eyes tightly—but then she draws it away and places the weapon in his hand instead. The metal is light as a kiss against Matt’s palm. Hot liquid drips down its blade—this is the one she used on Ben.

Matt turns it over in his hand. A moment later, Elektra is gone to his senses, and Foggy’s words echo from within the warehouse. Foggy’s vowels crack and slip, but his voice still recognizable as Vanessa’s. Which means that Fisk has arrived, right on time.

Matt doesn’t move. There is no fighting—no one needs him for this part of the plan.

“Wilson!” Foggy says. His heartbeat is steady as he speaks—he doesn’t have to fake his fear, the tremble in his voice. Not after what happened to Ben. “Wilson, there isn’t much time—the people who took me, they want something in your safe. They said it’s the only way to make you give up your better tomorrow. You can’t let them take it. You can’t let them _ruin_ you like this.”

Matt technically knows the purpose of Foggy’s speech, but. He can’t seem to make sense of the individual words. They keep slipping through Matt’s fingers when he tries to hold onto them. It’s all just a wave of sound to Matt.

Fisk’s words also try to break through to Matt’s mind.

“I-I have nothing that could do that. All that’s in my safe is money, documents, my father’s cuff links…They’ve been sadly misinformed, Vanessa. I _promise_ you, they will pay for that.”

Then Fisk grunts, and the bitter scent of sedative fills the air as Karen injects him from behind, as she whispers, “The only one who’s going to pay is you, asshole.”

The thump of Fisk’s body hitting the ground. The first level of the dream: completed, a success.

Matt’s hand opens, and the sai falls to the ground. He slips back into the warehouse through the window, and nearly gags at the thick perfume of Ben’s blood that’s blanketed the room.

“Matt!” Foggy says, with his own voice now. “Jesus, what the fuck happened to you?”

Matt shakes his head. “Ben, is—is Ben okay?”

“No. But he’s alive,” Claire says. She’s kneeling beside Ben, doing something to his chest with bandages and gauze. Ben groans, but otherwise doesn’t react. He’s unconscious.

“That knife missed his heart,” Claire continues, “but it punctured his right lung, and he’s having trouble breathing. I can’t tell without getting him to a hospital, but he’s probably bleeding into that lung right now.”

“Shit,” Karen whispers. She takes a deep breath, paces the floor. “Okay. Okay. Claire, how long do you think you can keep Ben alive?”

Claire groans. Her hands twitch like she wants to throw them in the air, but is too busy keeping pressure on Ben’s chest to do so. “I don’t suppose you’re asking if that’ll be long enough to get him to a _hospital_?”

“No, we have to keep going.”

“Karen, Ben is-”

“Dying,” Karen finishes. “And the only way we save him is if we finish the job according to plan. He’s dying here, but he won’t be on the second level of the dream.”

“He’ll…he’ll still be dying, Karen,” Foggy sighs. “Yeah, going deeper into the dream will distance Ben from the pain, but it can’t—it won’t…”

“It doesn’t need to,” Karen says. “All it needs to do is buy us time, and it can do that. Time will move more slowly the deeper into the dream we go. If Claire can just keep him alive for just—a _half an hour_ down here, that gives us plenty of time to finish the job. Then Claire give us the kick as planned by driving into the river!”

“This—that’s _ridiculous_!” Foggy sputters. “Even on the off-chance that it works-”

“Could it work?” Claire interrupts him.

“Yeah, but-”

“Then we’re doing it,” Claire says. “It’s the only thing that’s going to save Ben right now. Foggy, you help me move him to the car. Karen, Matt, set up the PASIV, and put it in the car with us when you’re done. Matt? Matt!”

Matt flinches, shakes his head. His thoughts are floating, hazy: like he’s just woken up from a long sleep. He can’t, he can’t—

_And who do you think is going to suffer for that?_

No one else.

Matt takes a deep breath. “Okay.”

They get to work. Matt’s hands move on autopilot to manipulate the tubes and wires of the PASIV, while Karen adjusts the settings. She works mostly in silence—hands shaking, still stinking of Ben’s blood—but at one point she asks, “Matt? Are you okay?”

Matt nods. It still feels as though he’s fighting through a fog just to understand a single word anyone says—but Matt’s used to fighting. It’s familiar, and that more than anything keeps his hands steady as he readies the PASIV. That is what allows him to process Foggy and Claire’s conversation as it drifts over to his ears.

“Something’s up with him,” Foggy says. They’ve lifted Ben into the passenger seat, and Claire has resumed her nursing. “With Matt.”

“Something always is” Claire sighs. “You really want to talk about him when he can hear you _and_ your heartbeat from across the room?”

“I’m just worried about him—he already knows that. Or, I hope he does.”

A pause. “I hope so too,” Claire finally murmurs. “I just wish he’d act like it.”

“You and me both. That projection of his, who do you think she was? The one who—you know, to Ben?”

“I have no idea. I really don’t know that much about Matt, Foggy. He keeps his shit close to his chest, if he can manage it—which he usually thinks he can. I don’t know if he’d tell me about her even if I _asked_ him.”

“He’s told you stuff before, hasn’t he? About, you know, the mask and his senses?”

“Does he seem like he’s in a state to tell anyone _anything_ right now, Foggy?” Claire says. “He needs time to reorient himself—time that we don’t have. Besides, I don’t think he wants to talk to me right now. He’s probably pissed that I came along even though I knew what was at stake if I died. Hypocrite.”

“So why _did_ you come along?” Foggy. “If…if you knew that?”

“For the same reason you would’ve,” Claire says. “Because I knew what was at stake if I _didn’t._ ”

Foggy doesn’t respond, but his heart beats _true, true, true,_ and Matt aches with how out-of-tune it is with his own. Because yes, Matt will risk his life to stop Fisk too, but he also grew up a child recruited to fight in a war he never understood. Matt wants to choose bravery—like Foggy does—but the very concept of _choosing_ has always been illusive to him: like trying to grab onto smoke.

Matt sits beside Foggy and Karen, their weight warm against his body as Claire hooks them up to the PASIV. Karen reaches a hand out for Ben, and Foggy squeezes Matt’s knee, and Matt thinks that if he were capable of choosing anything: it would be this.


	4. Chapter 4

Foggy’s not sure if he’ll ever get used to the surrealism of dreams. It’s one thing to wake up, go to work, and say to someone _yeah, I had the weirdest dream last night, this giraffe was trying to kill me but it was also my ninth grade history teacher?_ and it’s an entirely different thing to so thoroughly _inhabit_ dreams like one does with the PASIV.

It means that Foggy has to watch his friend bleed into his lungs one minute, and the next minute be thrown into a world where said friend is healthy, breathing, and sitting on a bar stool next to a local crime lord.

“Do you think Ben’s okay?” Foggy says. “I mean, he just passed out from _blood loss,_ and now he’s trying to outwit Fisk?”

Karen sips her drink, and Foggy winces. Karen’s not supposed to drink on the job—it’s the one compromise he’d managed to wrangle from her when he’d first brought up her drinking habits. The fact that she’s drinking right now is… _really_ not boding well for how optimistic she feels about their chances of success.

“Ben’s been doing this for a long time, Foggy,” Karen says evasively. She bites her lip, grips her drink like it’s a lifeline. “He knows what he’s doing.”

“Do _we_?” Foggy asks.

“Foggy-”

“No, I’m seriously asking,” Foggy says. “Look, I know I’m just the forger, but these are the facts as I see them. Fisk’s projections are freaking homicidal, Matt decided to bring a murderous projection into the mix, and said murderous projection nearly _killed_ our lead extractor. From where I’m sitting, that doesn’t sound like we know _anything_ about what we’re doing, Karen.”

“It’s…it’s not going how I thought it would,” Karen whispers. She downs the rest of her drink. “But the plan hasn’t _changed,_ we just need to-”

“Please don’t talk to me about the plan right now,” Foggy groans, remembering projections swarming, grabbing, tearing at him—remembers god damn _ninja_ attacking them.

Karen traces a finger around the edge of her glass. “I really am sorry, Foggy. You didn’t deserve what happened back there.”

Foggy sighs, looks at his watch. “You know, I was _going_ to be a professional and not yell at you for the rest of the job, but—that was looking pretty unlikely anyway, let’s be honest. It’s going to take Ben a while to explain everything to Fisk, and with the luck we’re having, we’ll _probably_ trip over our shoelaces and die before making it to the third level, so sure. Let’s do this now.”

“I don’t…” Karen glares at her glass. “I don’t know what you want me to say that I haven’t already said.”

Foggy runs his hands through his hair. He can’t scream right now without alerting every projection in the bar to their presence, so he has to take it out on his hair. He swears that this job has already taken years off his life.

“Karen, I don’t want you to _say_ anything,” Foggy says. “I just wanted you to trust me! I know this isn’t our usual job, and, yeah, I know that I don’t do a lot of the heavy lifting—but did you really think I wasn’t ready to put my life on the line for this? That I would chicken out the minute I found out? That I’d just abandon my home to Fisk’s gentrified, classist, piece of shit tomorrow? Do you really think _that_ little of me?”

“No, Foggy,” Karen says. “I—I know you’d fight for this with all you had. Of _course_ you would. You would’ve come around eventually. But we didn’t have _time_ for eventually. We’ve been running out of time since this whole thing started.”

She’s right. Even now, they barely have time for _this:_ this conversation that they desperately need to have. It isn’t fair—but then again, dreams aren’t meant to be fair. If they were, Foggy and Karen wouldn’t get paid to go in and fix them.

“You know how ugly dreams can be,” Karen says, like she can tell what Foggy’s thinking. “Maybe it was stupid of me, but I just wanted to keep you safe from…from everything that has to be done in _this_ one.”

And Foggy _hates_ her a little bit for saying that, because it almost makes this whole thing sound reasonable. Keep Foggy in the dark, protect him from the cycle of violence that twists through Karen and Matt’s lives. Let Foggy do the forging, let Foggy make people happy—and leave the fighting and scheming to those who thrive in it.

But protection at the cost of a lie isn’t _protection,_ because _here they are_ : Ben hurt and Matt hurt, and maybe those weren’t Karen’s fault, but _Foggy_ hurts now too. He hurts, and he should get to be _furious_ at her for that.

But—there just isn’t time. The bar trembles as if the city were in the midst of an earthquake. The drink in Karen’s glass surges forward, unbidden by gravity. Foggy sighs.

“Looks like Ben just told Fisk he’s dreaming,” Foggy says.

“Right on schedule. Or, what passes for the schedule now,” Karen says, glancing at her watch. The tremors slowly subside, and the liquid in Karen’s glass sloshes back in place. “And the dream is stabilized. God, Ben is damn good at this shit. I wish he hadn’t left the business.”

Foggy suddenly realizes that he really doesn’t know much about Ben. “Why did he leave?”

“He’s…been doing this for a long time, Foggy,” Karen says again, averting her eyes. “It can wear on a person. No matter how much good you think you’re doing.”

Karen pushes her chair back and stands. “We should go. Ben’s taking Fisk the long way around, but we’ll still need to move fast to meet up with Matt before they get to the rendezvous.”

Karen holds out a hand to help Foggy up, and Foggy takes it. Of course he does; of course he always will. They get up, leave the bar. When they walk the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, it’s through short-cuts and alleyways that don’t correspond to anything in the real world.

“I’m worried about Matt,” Foggy says.

“Red flags?”

“Red flags,” Foggy confirms. “You were with Ben at the time, but you should’ve seen the way he looked at that projection. It was _definitely_ his.”

“That projection nearly killed Ben,” Karen says tightly. “I…I should have seen something like this coming. I’ve put everyone in danger twice over now.”

“I’ll accept onceover,” Foggy says. “But come on, Karen. We both knew from the minute we saw Matt in action that we’d take him on, red flags or no. It’s the same thing I felt when I saw you, and probably the same thing you felt when you saw me.”

And even though everything else has gone to shit, Karen’s warm smile is nearly enough to make these unfamiliar backstreets feel like home to Foggy.

“Please don’t tell me you were about to call it fate,” Karen teases.

“Nah,” Foggy says. “Unfortunately for my blood pressure, I just plain chose you bastards.”

When Karen laughs, Foggy realizes that he hasn’t heard the sound in far too long. He decides that Nelson and Page—and Murdock—have earned a vacation after all this.

They arrive at the rendezvous point. Its architecture is close enough to that of Fisk’s tenement buildings that it’s recognizable as such, but different enough that the sight of the building makes Foggy’s brain itch. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch, and Foggy’s downing at least three ibuprofen when he wakes up. Or maybe just a bottle of whatever eel-juice Josie sees fit to sell to him.

Matt greets them as they approach the building. Or, rather, Matt jumps from a fire escape into an adjacent alleyway as they approach the building. Which, given how Matt first approached Foggy and Karen, is probably just how he greets people.

Matt’s wearing his Devil of Hell’s Kitchen gear, the black clothes neatly blending in with the shadows behind him. Still, even in the dark Foggy can see how the outfit’s torn in several places, how Matt’s favoring his left side. The first level of the dream has clearly taken a toll on more than just Matt’s mental state.

“You’re late,” Matt says.

“That’s because the schedule is fucked,” Karen says, leading them toward the tenement building. “It took Ben longer than anticipated to get Fisk on board.”

“How he is doing? Ben, I mean,” Matt asks quietly.

It’s— _weird_ to see the masked Devil of Hell’s Kitchen shift his feet like that, to see him hunched over with guilt. Guilt for the panic and fear and ghosts that lay buried in his subconscious, and for what’d happened when those forces were made tangible.

God, _Matt._ Foggy needs to talk to him, but there isn’t _time_. There just isn’t time to gently unravel and examine all of Matt’s cracked pieces right now.

“I’d feel better if we got Ben to the next level sooner rather than later,” Karen admits. “He kept up a brave face for Fisk, but he’s definitely in pain.”

“Then we’ll make this quick,” Matt says. “There are eight projections inside. All of them smell like gunpowder, so I’m guessing they’re Fisk’s defenses. You two stay on the landing, I’ll take them out.”

And with that, Matt kicks open the door to the building, folds open his cane with a deadly _snap_ , and runs inside. Foggy and Karen rush in after him, pulling out their guns as they station themselves on the landing.

The thing is—Foggy really hates guns, almost as much as he hates the fact that he knows how to _use_ a gun. He manages to shoot a projection in the back, and then he wants to crawl into a ball and cry as they shout in pain. Foggy thinks about Karen trying to remove him from a cycle of violence, thinks about Matt’s fragile words when Foggy told him how he got into the business— _You were recruited?_ —and wonders if they both didn’t hit the nail on the head after all.

A clacking sound echoes throughout the building. At first Foggy assumes that it’s simply an artifact from the first level of the dream—but then Matt chokes on nothing at the sound. Matt’s body loses all momentum, and it’s up to Karen to shoot the remaining projection who tries to take advantage of Matt’s sudden stillness.

The clacking sound echoes as it comes closer. And with the sound comes an old man, who uses a cane just like Matt’s to descend the stairs.

“Funny seeing you here, kid,” the old man says.

“Stick,” Matt hisses. “I thought I told you not to come back here.”

Before Foggy can wonder what the hell they’re talking about—and who the hell uses the name _Stick_ —Matt and the old man are fighting. They move as perfect mirrors, blocking and hitting each other with identical movements, dancing in familiar unison and that’s when Foggy realizes: this is the man who recruited Matt. Foggy also realizes that recruitment for Matt meant something a _lot_ different than it did for Foggy.

 _Recruitment_ for Matt apparently meant being taught to move his body like a hurricane in miniature. Matt fights Stick with whirling limbs and cascading violence as he uses his cane like it’s an extension of his body, another limb to fight and hit and _hurt_ with. He bares his teeth, he cracks his knuckles against skin and muscle, he moves like gravity is only a passing consideration to him. Recruitment, for Matt, meant being formed into _this:_ someone who has truly earned the name The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

“That’s one of Matt’s projections,” Karen whispers. “We have to do something.”

“I’m trying, but I can’t get a shot in without potentially hitting Matt.”

“No, Foggy—we have to _do_ something, we…” Karen swallows heavily. “Foggy, I don’t think Matt _knows_ that it’s a projection.”

Foggy squeezes his eyes shut and breathes, “Oh God.”

Because of course Matt doesn’t know. Matt’s too caught up in the violence and fury of the fight to do _anything_ else: including check his totem.

Foggy raises his voice. “Matt! Matt, listen to me, that isn’t really Stick! It’s just a projection! This isn’t _real_!”

“W-what,” Matt says, turning his head toward Foggy—and then any other words he was going to say are choked out as Stick wraps an arm around his neck. Matt scrambles against the hold, but Stick only presses him further against the stairwell.

“Your friends are right,” Stick says easily. “I’m just a figment of your imagination, stupid. Hiding out in dreams is a new low, Matty. But-” Stick shrugs “-I guess you always were too chicken-shit to face the world as it is.”

And with that, Stick pushes Matt off the railing, and Matt—too disoriented, too beaten and bruised, too _exhausted_ to do anything else—falls.

Foggy is pretty sure that these sort of things are supposed to happen in slow motion. Isn’t that how it goes in the movies? Everything should slow down, and Foggy should have the time to process this: to somehow help Matt.

Instead, it’s over before Foggy can say a word, and by the time he realizes exactly what’s happened, Stick has already disappeared, and Matt has already caught himself on the railing of the staircase below them.

“ _Matt!_ ” Karen says. She runs to help Matt climb back onto the landing. Foggy manages to get himself together enough to join her, and together they heave Matt back over the edge.

“We need to get to the apartment,” Matt groans. He holds his right arm tight against his body, and Foggy realizes that he probably dislocated it catching himself from that fall. _Jesus._

“So we’re just not going to talk about the fact that your crazy old teacher just showed up to kick your ass in the middle of the job?” Foggy says, a bit hysterically.

Matt’s head lolls to the side so that he’s somewhat facing Foggy. “Fisk is only a couple blocks away, Foggy. We can talk later.”

Yeah, as if Matt means that. God, Foggy just wants…

He just wants to pull back Matt’s mask and set him down on Foggy’s disgusting couch and watch boring infomercials together. He just wants to wipe the blood from Matt’s lip, to set the PASIV on fire and throw it away, to do _something_ , but Matt and Karen are already running up the stairs, and Foggy can only follow.

Foggy enters the apartment they’ve selected as a rendezvous point to find Karen handcuffing Matt to the radiator. It’s the hand opposite Matt’s dislocated shoulder, at least.

Foggy walks over and carefully examines Matt’s wrist. “The cuffs feel okay?”

Matt shrugs. The movement is awkward with his only functional shoulder being chained to a radiator. “It’s fine.”

“Bullshit ‘it’s fine,’” Karen says, angrily shoving the handcuff key into her pocket. “You just got beaten half to death by a ghost, Matt.”

“I’m still alive, aren’t I?” Matt says. He groans when Karen prods at his side—he probably broke a rib or _three,_ the fucker.

Foggy sighs. “I don’t know what kind of wellness scale you’ve got there, buddy, but ‘not murdered yet’ isn’t supposed to be at the top of it.”

“Well, it’ll have to do for now,” Matt bites out. “Fisk just entered the building, and we’re barely in position.”

Karen’s eyes widen, and she rushes over to retrieve the PASIV that’s under the bed.

Foggy only pinches the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t…this isn’t fair to me, you know.”

 _It’s not fair when you and Karen hide this shit from me, when you won’t even let me help you or hurt with you_ , Foggy wants to say, but he can hear footsteps in the corridor, so instead he closes his eyes. He imagines the power of a suit, the steady professionalism of James Wesley’s tablet, the weight of glasses on the bridge of his nose, and is ready by the time Fisk and Ben enter the room.

“Wesley,” Fisk breathes.

“Sir,” Foggy nods. “We’ve found him: the man who’s been…disrupting your business. He was staking out the location of the wall safe in your penthouse. We brought him here so that our, ah, conversation wouldn’t be disturbed.”

Fisk’s eyes turn to where Matt is chained to the radiator, panting and bleeding, teeth bared like he’s a demon from hell. Foggy would say that Matt plays his part well, but he knows that nothing about it is an act.

“Well? Need any more proof?” Ben says to Fisk.

Ben is so pale: barely able to say his lines to Fisk at this point. Pinpricks of red poke through his suit jacket. The spots of blood are small that Foggy can only see them when they glisten under the light.

“No,” Fisk growls. “This will suffice.”

Without warning, Fisk walks up to Matt and punches him square in the jaw. And then he just…keeps going. Fisk may be big, but he moves so quickly that Foggy can barely track him as he punches Matt again and again, beating him until Matt is crowded against the radiator trying to escape the blows.

“You kidnapped Vanessa!” Fisk roars. “You tricked me!”

Matt has to spit out blood before he answers. “Yes.”

Fisk growls at the response. Breathing heavily, Fisk then closes a single hand around Matt’s neck.

Foggy can’t take his eyes off of the way that Matt chokes and sputters, flailing uselessly at Fisk’s grip. The plan accounted for Fisk’s anger, is _dependent_ upon Fisk’s anger, but Foggy hadn’t realized what this much rage would look like up close. He hadn’t realized how closely it would resemble Matt’s own.

“Mr. Fisk,” Ben says urgently. “We need him _alive_ until we can finish interrogating him.”

The only indication that Fisk hears Ben is that his grip on Matt’s neck loosens just enough for Matt to suck in a wheezing breath.

Ben turns toward Matt, holding his side with a wince. “What do you want in Mr. Fisk’s safe? Money? Documents?”

Matt shoots a bloody grin at them. He’s no forger, but with a smile like that, he doesn’t need to be in order to convince any one of them that he’s dangerous.

“I don’t need those to take you down,” Matt says. “Not with what I’m going to find in that safe.”

“And what is that?” Karen asks.

“The only thing that can take down Fisk’s better tomorrow,” Matt says. He cries out when Fisk punches him in response.

“Sir, we’re not getting anywhere like this,” Foggy says. “The best approach may be to utilize his own…unique methodology. We go into his mind, search through his subconscious until we find out who he is and what he wants, and then we dispose of him. Convoluted, perhaps, but undeniably elegant.”

Fisk nods. “Very well.”

When Fisk releases his hold on Matt, Matt slumps bonelessly to the floor, and it takes everything Foggy has not to break character and check on him. He nearly breaks character as it is, practically shaking with worry during the few, long minutes it takes to put Fisk under.

The moment Fisk closes his eyes, Ben slumps against the wall with a groan, and Karen and Foggy rush to uncuff Matt.

“Jesus, Matty. Are you okay?” Foggy asks.

“’M fine,” Matt breathes. He stumbles to the bed with Foggy and Karen’s help. “I’ve had-” he takes a break to wheeze “-I’ve had worse.”

“…I wish I didn’t believe you,” Foggy sighs. “We are definitely talking about your vigilante activities when we wake up.”

“Gotta survive this first,” Matt says, grinning as he pats Foggy’s hand. Maybe it’s because he’s so exhausted, but Matt just leaves his hand there afterward, cold and shaking as it rests on top of Foggy’s.

“That,” Ben says, slowly making his way toward the bed, “might be harder than we first thought. We need to get to the next level now.”

The pinpricks of blood on Ben’s shirt have spread to form full droplets. Foggy closes his eyes. Realistically, not more than twelve hours of dream time have passed, but Foggy feels as though they’ve been trying to out-run the faults in this plan for _days._

“We’ll get you two to the next level first,” Karen says, as she hooks Matt and Ben up to the PASIV and begins sedating them. “Go there, fucking _survive,_ and Foggy will be right after you.”

“Wait, what do you mean _I’ll_ be right after them,” Foggy says. “You’re supposed to go to the next level.”

“Change of plans. I’m staying.”

“Change of—you _can’t_ stay, this is my dream! I’m the one who has to stay behind-”

“I switched the settings on the PASIV before we left the first level,” Karen says. “This is _my_ dream, Foggy.”

Well. That would explain why none of the projections around here look like Foggy’s Aunt Velma. There’s always _one_ who looks like old Velma.

Foggy curses under his breath. “The third level is a tactical one, Karen! They need _you_ there, not me!”

“Ben can handle the tactics,” Karen says. “And Matt knows the architecture inside and out. I know you’re angry at me, Foggy, and that I’m definitely just making that worse right now, but I am _staying_ , because if I don’t stay here to take care of Ben, he is going to _die,_ and it will be all _my_ fault, and I can’t let that-”

Karen hides a sob in her palm, and Foggy doesn’t hesitate in wrapping her up in a hug. He runs a comforting hand through her hair, lets her cry into his shoulder.

“What happened to Ben wasn’t your fault, Karen,” Foggy says. “Besides, he’s already safe in the next level now. He’s going to be okay.”

“How do you know?” Karen says. She rests her cheek against Foggy’s ear. “How can you be so sure?”

“Because…because I have to be.”

And it’s true. Foggy may pride himself on facts and evidence—so much so that he’d wanted to be a lawyer once upon a time—but at the end of the day, in the game of passion and pain that is sharing your subconscious with someone else, Foggy doesn’t give a shit whether it makes sense to believe that everything will be okay. Foggy has to believe, does so with an instinct that tethers him back to who he was before all of this, to who he still wants to be _now_ : someone with _hope._

“I think,” Karen says, “that that’s another reason why you need to follow Matt, Foggy. I think he needs to hear you say that too.”

“That’s because he’s a lonely asshole with trust issues.”

“Yes,” Karen laughs. “But he trusts _you_ , and that’s what matters.”

“Maybe…”

Foggy can’t help but be doubtful. But then he thinks about late nights of watching shitty infomercials on Foggy’s couch, of Matt describing sleeping with his father’s boxing robes, and thinks that maybe Matt trusts him as much as he knows how to.

“He trusts you too, you know,” Foggy says.

“Maybe,” Karen says. “But you trust _him_.”

Foggy does. God help him, he does. Foggy trusted Matt even when the bastard had an arm wrapped around his neck all those months ago, and Foggy trusts him now, even knowing just how many ghosts Matt has lying in wait.

“I thought you said that a forger who trusts everyone is a bad idea,” Foggy says.

“I never said that,” Karen says. “I just said that it was going to get you hurt.”

“…Yeah.”

“I don’t…I don’t think I’ve ever said this, but…thank you for doing trusting us anyway,” Karen says, tightening her arms around him. “I’m…I’m _so_ sorry, Foggy.”

Foggy presses his face into her shirt: inhales her mint shampoo, the tang of blood and sweat and alcohol that clings to her clothes.

“Don’t you dare use this tragic goodbye to get me to accept your apology, Page,” he tries to joke, but he has to clear his throat of tears halfway through.

“Not a goodbye,” Karen reminds him. She pulls away. “We’ll see each other when we wake up. Remember?”

The thing is: memory is illusive in dreams. Even in reality, Foggy has trouble remembering where he’s left his keys, what he needs to put on his grocery list, but here—in the world of dreams—Foggy knows that he’s going to have to cling onto this memory in order to keep it in the next level. He repeats it over and over again, holds it close to his chest as Karen sedates him, forcing himself to remember: this is not goodbye _._


	5. Chapter 5

Matt can already tell that he belongs here: in the third level of the dream. The first and second levels are for planting and cultivating ideas, but this level is one of action. They’re now in the deepest recesses of Fisk’s mind. It’s here, in the third level, where Fisk’s most guarded secrets are locked away.

In this case, literally locked away: the architecture of this level is a prison complex. It makes sense—Matt can’t think of a place more secure than this.

Despite waking up inside the prison cell, Matt hasn’t felt so grounded for the entirety of the job. Perhaps it’s because there is no subterfuge or twists hiding in this level: Matt knows what he’s meant to do.

For now, Matt simply lies in his cell and plucks at the fabric of his orange jumpsuit. Or, he’s told that it’s an orange jumpsuit. Some of the more visually-based psychological trappings of being in a prison—uniformity, lack of scenery, etc.—are admittedly a bit lost on someone like Matt.

The rest though—the cramped rooms encroaching on his radar, the sounds and _smells_ of every other inmate bombarding him, the itch of his uniform—more than make up for it.

“Murdock? You have a visitor.”

Matt tilts his head toward the cell door and hopes that his sigh of relief isn’t noticeable. He’s led through the halls until they arrive at a row of glass and phones and bodies. On the other side of ones of the partitions, Foggy’s heartbeat _sings._ Matt’s sure that this sigh of relief _is_ noticeable, but he can’t bring himself to care.

The moment the guard leaves them, Matt picks up the phone and says, “What took you so long?”

“Karen and I had some last minute things to discuss,” Foggy says.

Matt shifts uncomfortably. Either those ‘last minute things’ involved Karen’s lies, Ben’s death, or Matt’s ghosts, and Matt’s not sure which one of those he wants to talk about _less_ right now.

“I thought it was Karen who was supposed to be on this level,” Matt says carefully.

Foggy only shrugs. “Oh, uh, I just shrugged. Don’t know if you can pick that up through the glass. Change of plans, she stayed behind to look after Ben.”

“Ah,” Matt says softly. She shouldn’t _have_ to stay behind to look after Ben—Matt shouldn’t have let this happen. The devil inside him: gaining traction yet again. “Where is Ben?”

“I haven’t seen him on this level yet,” Foggy says. “I’m going to meet up with him and Fisk right after this.”

“But you just decided you wanted to say hi to me first,” Matt drawls. “Even though we’re already behind schedule.”

Foggy, to his credit, doesn’t bother lying. He never does, not when it’s important—and even when it’s unimportant too. Foggy’s not like Matt or Karen; he doesn’t need dishonesty to do his work.

“Yeah,” Foggy says. “I wanted…hell, I wanted to make sure you were okay, Matt. You got pretty banged up in the last two levels, and I don’t just mean physically. Seems like your ghosts tore up quite a few mental floorboards back there.”

“I’m fine-”

“Please don’t lie to a forger,” Foggy sighs. “Especially not one who wiped the blood off your chin just a few—whatever units of time it’s been since the apartment.”

“A few hours.”

“Shit. I didn’t mean to leave you here for that long.” Foggy scrubs a hand across his face. “How, uh, how’s prison? Trade your spare pillow for smokes yet? Start any riots?”

“Foggy, I—you watch too many movies,” Matt laughs.

“Maybe so, but you didn’t answer my questions,” Foggy says. “Thus, I am forced to assume that you’re a smoking, rioting fiend.”

“Nah. Figured I’d wait until you came by before I sank into delinquency.”

“Thank God. Couldn’t have you sinking into delinquency,” Foggy mutters, obviously sarcastic. Matt can’t help but snort in response.

This conversation….It feels like it could a scene straight from one of the nights they’d spent talking on Foggy’s couch. Like this is just another night that Matt is sharing with Foggy after a long day of grinding away at L&Z and exhausting himself dreaming. If not for the glass partition between them, Matt could almost convince himself that this is real-

_It’s just a projection! This isn’t real!_

Matt nearly recoils at how Foggy’s words echo through his head. He has to close his eyes and bite his tongue hard to keep his composure.

“Matt?” Foggy says gently. “It’s _okay_ that you’ve got ghosts you know—most people in this business do, honestly—but if you’re not dealing with them, that means they’re going to bite you in the ass as soon you let your guard down. And in a dream, your guard is pretty much _always_ down. Are you _sure_ you’re okay?”

Matt suddenly wants to throw the phone against the partition. Because he can’t _lie_ to Foggy, and there’s no escaping his presence when glass and cold steel separate Matt from an exit—Foggy has _trapped_ him. Not intentionally, no, but Foggy is a forger: even when he doesn’t mean to be. He doesn’t con, he doesn’t lie, but it’s like he can reach into Matt’s heart knowing exactly what lies there, and then speak and speak until he’s weaved a blanket of words that Matt can’t _help_ but want to believe.

But now Matt is _here_ and _trapped,_ and maybe that’s not Foggy’s fault, but Matt doesn’t know how to get _out_.

“You told me,” Matt says angrily. “That—that ghosts exist in dreams so that we can let them go. But how can that be true? How is that _possibly_ true _,_ how am I supposed to…”

Matt can’t get the words out. He doesn’t know how to say, _I thought I_ did _let them go, I thought I did. How could I not have let them go when they’re people who let go of_ me _a long time ago? I just wanted to_ help _people, but now they won’t let me, and I don’t know what to_ do, _Foggy_.

“I’m sorry,” Matt says shakily, trying to lower his voice.

“Hey,” Foggy says. He presses a hand against the partition. Matt brushes his hand against where Foggy’s is, soaking in the heat from Foggy’s skin that leaks through the glass. “It’ll be okay, Matt. I know that doesn’t mean much now, but...Fuck, there isn’t time for me to say something that matters, so I’m asking you to trust me as a friend on this. And, well, you’re probably going to have to trust me, period, if we want to make it out of this thing alive. Okay?”

Matt takes a deep breath, nods. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Foggy says. “Tabling this conversation for once we’re awake and have had a minimum of two beers. I have to go help Ben. Try not to start any riots while I’m gone.”

Matt smiles. The expression sits oddly on his face, it doesn’t feel forced. In fact, it almost feels like something that’s supposed to be there. “I make no promises.”

“Typical Murdock,” Foggy snorts. “Can’t even wait for us to break him out of jail without uniting his inmates against the prison industrial complex.”

“It’s a part of my charm.”

“Yeah,” Foggy laughs, his heartrate singing _truth_. “It kind of is.”

 

***

 

When Matt returns to his cell, he picks at the collar of his jumpsuit for another minute before closing his eyes and remembering what Foggy told him in the first level of the dream.

 _Imagine how you_ feel _when you wear a suit: in control, poised, professional._

Matt doesn’t need poise or professionalism in this cell, but control—that sounds pretty nice about now. He thinks about how he feels when he wears the mask—powerful; like a vessel, something to channel rage and hurt through until they can finally form something good—but then he stops and thinks _armor._ Foggy may have put salve on his wounds just now, but Matt’s still taken quite the beating from this job.

So Matt thinks about protection: the sensation of nitrile gloves against his skin as Claire checks him for injuries, the smell of tomatoes and garlic in Karen’s apartment, the warmth of Foggy’s hand through glass.

Matt reaches for his face and padded gloves brush up against a hard helmet. He starts at the small horns that protrude from the mask, but—he supposes he can’t fault his subconscious for having taken the title of The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen to heart. He reaches for his thigh and finds his cane there: changed now, split into two separate parts.

He connects the two halves with a grin. This will do just fine.

When Fisk enters the room—along with Ben and Foggy-as-Wesley—all three of their heartrates spike at Matt’s new outfit. Fisk, Matt thinks, cares the least. Judging by how hot his face becomes upon seeing Matt, the only thing he cares about is wrapping his hands around Matt’s throat again.

But Ben is a calming presence, even if the handkerchief he’s coughing into right now reeks of blood, so Fisk doesn’t act. He only speaks.

“So,” Fisk says. “You were hiding here, in a cell. If we’re in your dream, does that make you a prisoner of your own mind? Or is that rather too psychoanalytical for your tastes?”

Matt bares his teeth. “What do you think?”

“Ah. I thought as much,” Fisk says. “Though I must say, I do wonder what goes on in your subconscious if that’s the outfit you’ve chosen to face me. Does that make me an angel? But perhaps that is too binaristic an analysis.”

Now that he’s got Matt cornered in a jail cell, some amount of calm has returned to Fisk. But coiled fury still lingers in Fisk’s clenched fists, and Matt knows it’s only a matter of time before they destroy each other.

Fine by him.

“Sir,” Foggy interrupts, probably even more ready for the psychoanalysis to stop than Matt is. He nods toward the far end of the room. “There’s the wall safe, just where our friend here said it would be. Whatever the ‘Devil’ thinks could stop your better tomorrow lies just within reach.”

“Yes,” Fisk breathes, stepping toward the safe. His hand shakes as he twists the dial, skin slipping against metal in a slick sound that rings in Matt’s ears.

The safe swings open. Fisk startles, but—with jerking, hesitating hands—he reaches for what’s inside. What he finds forces him into silence for a long moment before he finally speaks.

“So it was these. Of course it was these,” Fisk says softly. He runs his fingers along the cuff links that are now nestled in his hand. Their fabricated meaning no doubt floods his mind.

“They were my father’s, once upon a time,” Fisk continues. “I used to wear them every day to…to remind myself that I was not him. That I could _never_ be like him. Recently, I put them away—so that I could start my life anew, create a better tomorrow. Or, so I thought at the time. Now…I am not so sure.”

The scent of blood in the room has become even more overpowering, but not just because of Ben’s handkerchief. It’s the cuff links, Matt realizes. In addition to being coated in sweat and oil, they’re smeared with _blood._ Fisk inhales, and it’s as if he can smell it just the same as Matt can: sharp and coppery and bright.

And this is it, the moment that Ben was talking about: realization. Matt can sense it in the hitch in Fisk’s breath, the way Fisk’s hands tremble and jostle the cuff links so that they _sing_ in his hands.

Ben’s heartrate shudders, and Matt can sense him slumping against the wall. Foggy inches over to Ben and takes some of his weight, getting the stench of Ben’s blood on his suit as he helps him.

If Fisk were in a position to notice this behavior, he would no doubt become suspicious. But right now, it’s as if Foggy and Ben don’t exist. The only thing Fisk can see are those cuff links and Matt: the man who told Fisk what they meant.

"Are you a religious man?" Fisk asks.

"Yes," Matt says.

“How your moniker must upset you then,” Fisk tuts. “If you’re devout, then you probably know the story of the good Samaritan. The story of one man who saved another—his neighbor, who’d been traveling from Jerusalem to Jerico before being set upon by men of ill intent.”

“I know the story.”

“Of course you do. And I suppose,” Fisk says, finally turning away from the cuff links to face Matt, “that you think you’re the good Samaritan in that story. That you’re a force of good for our city.”

Matt falters, cannot speak for a moment. _Is_ he the good Samaritan? Or is he simply the devil nipping at people’s heels?

Is it possible for one person to be both?

“I…I want to be him,” Matt finally says.

“Yes, yes…as did I. I always thought I was too. It’s funny, isn’t it? How even the best of men can be…deceived by their true nature.”

Matt clears his throat, and when he speaks, it’s as he speaks in the courtroom: precisely, carefully, daring the opposition to take his bait. He’s been playing that same, dangerous role with Fisk for a while now: baiting Fisk to reveal something over the radio in a collapsed building all those months ago, lying to Fisk while cuffed to the radiator, and now right here, in this prison cell where Matt still plays the devil trying to tempt Fisk toward realization.

“What do you mean?” Matt says.

“It means,” Fisk says, raising his voice. "That I am not the Samaritan. That I'm not the priest in that story, nor the Levite. That I am the ill intent who set upon the traveler on a road that he should _not_ have been on."

And _there it is._

 _“And what, exactly, is it that we want Fisk to realize?” Karen had said in that planning meeting all those months ago. “You said that we have to convince him that what he wants to do isn’t what he’s doing—but what does that actually_ mean _?”_

 _“Fisk is in Hell’s Kitchen because he thinks he’s the good guy,” Ben explains. “Because he thinks that there’s such a_ thing _as a good guy. So what could be more devastating to him than realizing that that’s not true? We make him realize his true nature, and his empire comes crashing down.”_

_“We make him realize he’s an asshole,” Foggy snorts. “But wait. So the plan is just to make him a self-aware bad guy instead of one who’s deluding himself? How is that supposed to solve anything?”_

_Matt closes his eyes, thinks about Fisk’s voice over the radio_ —We’re not so different, you and I— _and wonders if it’s true._

_Because he knows. He knows the answer to this question._

_“Because Fisk wouldn’t be able to tolerate living a lie,” Matt says from his corner of the room. “If he knew that he wasn’t actually helping people, he…he wouldn’t be able to go on.”_

_“Best outcome,” Ben says, “is that he realizes that what he’s doing doesn’t align with his principles, and he stops. Maybe he moves away, tries to start a new life. Second-best outcome: he self-destructs, makes a mistake so big that everyone knows what he is.”_

_“And the worst outcome?” Foggy asks._

_Ben is silent for a moment. When he speaks, he speaks carefully. “Uncovering men like Fisk isn’t a safe business. Even if we successfully implant this idea into his head, he’s not going to react well to it. To tell you the truth? I don’t want to do this job in the slightest. I don’t want to put myself in that kind of danger, not when I have people who need me.”_

_“But you’re still going to help,” Karen says: half-statement, half-question._

_Ben chuckles, nods. “People of principle rarely do what’s best for them, Karen.”_

No, they don’t. But Matt can still do what’s best for this city.

“Perhaps this is for the best,” Fisk hisses. “If I am the ill intent, then there is nothing stopping me from killing you. You have infuriated me for the _last_ time.”

Finally, there is nothing left between Matt and Fisk. No radios, no heaps of L&Z paperwork, no other members of Fisk’s criminal enterprise. It’s just Matt and Fisk _,_ and after all of these months, the job is finally completed: just one more step to take.

“Take your shot,” Matt growls.

Fisk charges toward him: fury and unleased ill intent. This fight is nothing like flipping around Fisk’s defenses, or running after Elektra, or mirroring Stick’s moves, or even like the beatdown Fisk had given Matt in the second level. This is a brawl, plain and simple. Fisk punches, Matt dodges, and both of them yell as they deal out blow after blow.

“This city doesn’t deserve a better tomorrow,” Fisk bellows. He’s grabbed a hold of one piece of Matt’s cane and beats it over Matt’s head again and again, until Matt feels dizzy from the blows. “It deserves to drown in its filth! It deserves people like you, people like my father!”

“No,” Matt pants, finally evading enough blows to pull himself to his feet. “This is _my_ home. My family.”

The cell’s wall tremble and quake at Matt’s words, and this is another reason why he can’t be an architect, why he isn’t made for the world of dreams. He’s too volatile, too emotional. But this isn’t new information. The devil has been inside him since the moment Matt learned to make a fist.

Matt throws a punch at Fisk, and the jail cell slips away. This is all there is: this fight, this city, and this dream that combines the two. Matt’s not sure that anything could pull him out of this, could make him stop his assault on Fisk. Matt punches and kicks and leaps until finally, bleeding and gasping, Fisk stumbles backward.

“You really think that this will change anything? Fisk spits at him. “You really think that one man, in a silly little costume, will make a difference?”

Matt is silent for a moment that stretches on far longer than it ever could in reality—the dream slowing Fisk’s words, preserving them in Matt’s mind as he replays them over and over.

 _I don’t know_ , Matt finally thinks, and then he yells, leaps into the air, and gives Fisk one final blow. And that’s it. Fisk falls, and Matt stands over his body, fists ready if Fisk decides to get back up again.

Matt’s not sure for how long he stands there, panting and bleeding, until words finally reach his ears again, distorted like they’re static coming in through a broken radio.

“We did it,” Ben murmurs. “It’s over.”

Matt shakes his head to try to clear the static. ‘It’s…it’s…”

Over. But there’s still adrenaline and fire coursing through Matt’s blood, an excess of energy that leaves his hands shaking. All these months of fighting and planning, and—and now Fisk lies there on the ground, and Matt stands over him with trembling hands.

It’s done. Matt’s work, it’s—it’s done. All those sleepless nights, all the blood and pain, all the heartache—it can _mean_ something now. Right? This ache that twists in Matt’s chest can finally ease. He’s finally done some good— _he_ is finally good.

But all he can think about is how still Fisk is. How he just lies there: another person—another purpose—for Matt to let go of.

Matt should take a step back from Fisk’s body, now that it’s over. But as restless as Matt is, he can’t seem to make himself move. His feet feel like lead in his boots, like anchors weighing him down.

“Ben!”

Foggy’s voice is distant, his own again and not Wesley’s. But there’s still something off right now. It’s not the stench of blood that gags Matt, it’s not the racing of Foggy’s heart, it’s, it’s—

Ben. Ben has no heartbeat.

“Ben’s heart,” Matt breathes. “Foggy, his heart…”

“No shit,” Foggy says. “Matt. _Matt._ Snap out of it, and help me with him.”

Matt takes a deep breath and forces himself to take a step forward. And then another. Until he’s helping Foggy shift Ben into a supine position.

“How much time do you think has passed on Claire’s level?” Matt says hoarsely.

“Too fucking much. Matt…” Foggy starts, when Matt moves on automatic and begins to give Ben chest compressions. “Matt.”

But Matt can’t _stop_ : now that he’s been propelled into motion again, he doesn’t have the will or drive to fucking _stop._ Or maybe it’s just too much of both of those things, a sharp abundance that drowns out everything else until Matt’s drowning in it.

“Matt!” Foggy cries again, shaking Matt by the shoulder until he stops. “It’s not his body _here_ that needs fixing. We bought him time by going this deep, but it just…it just wasn’t enough.”

“Then we buy more time,” Matt says. He shakes off Foggy’s hand and lunges under his cot for the humming PASIV he can sense there. Had Karen seen this coming? Had she prepared for this possibility when she designed the architecture? Had she known that Matt would fail to protect his own so spectacularly?

“Okay,” Foggy says, swallowing heavily. “I’ll do it. I’ll go into Ben’s mind and get him out of limbo. You stay here and set off the explosives as planned so that the floor collapses and we have a kick. I get Ben out before you set them off, we both end up here, we all get the kick, and then we all wake up. It’s…it’s possible, right? In theory...”

“I’ll do it,” Matt says.

Foggy groans. “We don’t have time for whatever macho, I’m-the-best-dreamer pissing contest this is! _I_ go in; _you_ stay here and protect our bodies.”

Matt exhales harshly. Even this deep into the dream, he can feel every cut and bruise and cracked rib he’s gained on the way here. The stench of copper has been filling the room for some time now, but it’s not just Ben’s blood doing it. It’s _Matt’s_.

“Foggy,” Matt breathes. “You can protect our bodies just as well as I can when I’m in this state.”

He gestures to himself, and Foggy whispers, “Shit,” as he no doubt catalogs every single mark he can see on Matt’s body. Matt’s thankful that Foggy can only see some of those marks: that he can’t see the internal injuries, the deepest cuts, the frantic static that won’t quiet down in Matt’s mind.

Matt presses on. “Claire isn’t here to save me on this level. If you go into limbo, I’ll probably only be a couple minutes behind you. This way, even if…even if I can’t get Ben and myself out, you can still wake up when Karen gives us the kick.”

Foggy’s breathing shifts and sways as he tries to think of a counterargument. But in the end, they’re running out of time too quickly for Foggy to even try.

“You self-sacrificing fuck,” Foggy whispers, pulling Matt into a fierce hug. “If you’re not back in one minute, I’m going after you.”

Matt hugs him back just as tightly. “Is that a threat or a promise?” Matt says, voice wavering on the joke.

“Both,” Foggy says, sniffling into Matt’s neck.

Matt buries his head in Foggy’s shoulder, inhaling his sweat and skin cells. His lips press into Foggy’s skin, tasting the oil and pheromones that, to Matt, separate into different, distinct flavors: ones of _fear, sadness, love._

Matt wishes they could stay in this moment—as horrible as it sounds, he wishes they could never wake up from this.

“Okay,” Foggy says, pulling away. “Setting the charges now, then I’ll hook you up to the PASIV so you can go be a hero. Just don’t get yourself killed doing it, okay?”

“I promise.”

When Foggy turns the PASIV on, sedative fills Matt’s veins until his racing, frantic cells finally calm and slow, until nothing in Matt can move or think at all. He only dreams.


	6. Chapter 6

The next minute is the longest of Foggy’s life. Every _tick_ of his watch is another second that Matt’s body lies before him, slack-jawed and bleeding, while Matt’s mind stumbles around in uncharted dream space. Absent of Fisk and Matt’s battle cries, the prison is now deathly silent save for their labored breaths and the tick of Foggy’s watch.

There’s a dark, ugly blood stain on Foggy’s shirt where Matt had hugged him. Foggy has to close his eyes and dig his fingernails into his palms to keep himself from vomiting.

_It’s okay. He’s coming back. He’s coming back._

Every tick of his watch is another second that hope sears through Foggy’s chest, even as he knows: _Matt isn’t made for limbo; no one is, but right now Matt is exhausted and scared and_ lost _, and I should not have let a man that haunted go alone to face the place that ghost stories are made of._

After fifty-five seconds of panic, after fifty-five seconds of watching Matt’s breaths grow shallower and shallower, Foggy mutters “fuck it,” sets the timers on the explosions, and hooks himself up to the PASIV. He takes a deep breath, and he lets himself dream.

If Foggy lives to ever talk to another extractor again, he’ll tell them that waking up in limbo is not like waking up in a regular dream. Because even if an architect is truly masterful, there’s always something _off_ about a regular dream. It’s like the feeling of _knowing_ you’ve forgotten something, but being unable to remember precisely what: a cognitive dissonance that’s not enough to wake you up, but is enough to ring alarm bells for anyone who’s practiced at dreaming. Or for anyone with fucking super senses.

Waking up in limbo…isn’t like that. From the moment Foggy opens his eyes, it’s as if a mimetic haze clouds his vision. Everything—the smells, the sounds, _everything_ —feels _so_ incredibly real that that’s the only way Foggy’s able to remember that it _isn’t._ He clings to that feeling of _too real, too much_ and lets it guide him through the city, like Theseus following the spool of thread through the labyrinth.

The city is a place that’s like Hell’s Kitchen, but is not Hell’s Kitchen. The geography is the same, the smells of garbage and hot dogs and liquor are the same, but it’s _not_ Hell’s Kitchen, and Foggy doesn’t know how to account for that difference. Maybe it’s because, though this Hell’s Kitchen is exactly the same as Foggy’s own, Foggy has never actually _been_ in this one, and he can somehow sense the difference that his absence makes.

Given that Matt is a hyper-vigilant crime fighter who circles the city over rooftops, and Ben Urich is in the _phone book,_ Foggy decides to look for Ben first. Foggy finds him in an office that’s identical to his one at _The Daily Bulletin,_ only this one is labeled as _The Daily Bugle._

Oh yeah. Another thing Foggy will tell people about limbo, if he ever makes it out of there? It makes no fucking sense.

Foggy knocks on Ben’s office door while ignoring the askance looks he’s getting from other reporters. They’re almost certainly because of the blood stain on Foggy’s shirt. Foggy has to take a deep breath to muster up the focus to imagine its absence.

The thing is—Foggy doesn’t know what state Ben is in, doesn’t even know if he’ll _recognize_ Foggy. Foggy doesn’t even know how to _begin_ this conversation.

“Come in,” Ben says.

 _Be brave,_ Foggy thinks, remembering how readily Matt dove into limbo in order to save Ben. _Be brave like Matt._

When Foggy enters Ben’s office, he’s reminded of just how differently time flows in limbo. Ben hadn’t been young when Foggy had met him, but now his hair’s turned silver. Time has added a rasp to Ben’s voice, has mapped wrinkles and frown lines across his face that weren’t there before.

Jesus. How many years had Matt and Foggy cost Ben while arguing over who should be the one to go into limbo?

“Sit down, Foggy,” Ben says, not looking up from his notes. He isn’t acting like there’s anything wrong, isn’t acting like he knows that, a few levels of subconscious away, he’s already bled to death.

“H-how are you?” Foggy says awkwardly, still trying to think of a good way to say _so, I just watched you die a minute ago. But it’s okay, you’re still alive. Ish. But we kind of have to wake up right now if we want it to stay that way._

Thankfully, Ben takes the decision out of Foggy’s hands. He looks Foggy up and down, raises his eyebrows, and says, “Depends. Are you asking about my mood, or are you asking how I’ve liked living in limbo for the past seven years?”

“Oh thank God,” Foggy breathes. “I was worried you’d forgotten that this is…”

“Not real?” Ben shrugs. He fingers the ring on his hand. “Totems don’t work in limbo, so yeah, it took me a few years to figure it out. But I got there in the end.”

“How?” Foggy asks. “This place is so…” _Real_ isn’t a big enough word to describe this world. It’s like simply describing actual reality as real—it’s such an obvious statement that it doesn’t actually _describe_ anything.

“If I weren’t here to look for you and Matt, I’m not sure I would’ve been able to remember,” Foggy confesses.

“Believe me, I know the feeling.” Ben rubs at beard, then sighs. “Nobody knows this but Karen, Foggy, but…I’ve been here before. My wife and I ended up here together a long time ago. It’s why we left the business. Hard to stay after something like that. I think you understand.”

Foggy does. God, does he understand. _How could you possibly have agreed to come back for more?_ Foggy wants to ask. But this is a question that Ben has already given the answer to: people of principle rarely do what’s best for them.

“Maybe having been here before made it a bit easier,” Ben continues. “I don’t know. It’s in the little things, if you know where to look. The city feels different, the paper’s name is different. But mostly? It was Matt. The minute he got here, he started turning heads: including mine. I started to pay more attention to things, realized that all the little discrepancies weren’t adding up.”

Foggy’s heart seizes with hope so loudly that Matt must surely hear it from—wherever he is in this place.

“Is Matt…is he okay?” Foggy whispers, not sure whether he’s ready to hear the answer. But he’s come this far—he’s not leaving Matt now. Not again.

Ben nods, and Foggy breathes a sigh of relief. Just the knowledge that Matt’s alive makes it a bit easier for Foggy to move through this place while remembering that it’s not his home: that it doesn’t get to claim him, or Ben, or Matt.

“He’s okay,” Ben reassures him. “He’s…well, he’s made quite a career for himself around here.”

“I don’t understand.”

Ben rummages through the papers on his desk. After a moment, he plucks a newspaper from the pile and flips it open: and there he is. Right at the top of the page is a photo of Matt, capturing him in all his grace and violence as he arcs across a rooftop. Matt’s costume is just like the one he’d worn in the jail cell—red, with _horn_ s.

Matt even has a headline to match the costume: _Masked Daredevil Topples Fixer’s Syndicate._

“‘Daredevil?’” Foggy says.

Ben shrugs. “Beats ‘The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen’ I guess.”

The rushing warmth in Foggy’s stomach that came with seeing Matt’s photo turns sour as he realizes…

“Matt doesn’t know he’s dreaming…does he?”

“No,” Ben says softly. “I tried to talk to him when I figured it out, but…selective attention in dreams is a tricky thing. He never seemed to process what I was saying. Eventually, I stopped trying. Focused on keeping him safe rather than getting him out of here.”

“And is he safe?” Foggy says, looking at the photo and wondering how that could possibly be the case. Masked _Daredevil?_ But then he sees the small curl of a smile that’s barely visible in the dimly-lit picture. “Is he happy?”

“Matt’s as safe as a guy like him can ever be,” Ben says with a wry smile. “As for happy…It’s hard to tell with him. Some days are worse than others, that much I know. It probably doesn’t help that Fisk is here sometimes.”

Foggy starts. “ _What_ -”

“Not the actual Fisk,” Ben says quickly. “A projection of him.”

“A ghost.” Foggy sighs. “Jesus, Matt really can’t let go, can he? I just—I asked him to _wait,_ to hold on until he could talk to me and Karen about it, but he still couldn’t let it go.”

“Could you?” Ben says. “Think about it from his perspective, Foggy. If your ghosts were the only thing that gave you purpose, would you even _want_ to let them go?”

Foggy shakes his head. He doesn’t know the answer to that—doesn’t want to be in a position where he _can_ know the answer to that.

“I need to talk to him,” Foggy says. “Well, what I really need is to get him some therapy, but first we have to get him out of here. Do you know where he is?”

Ben chuckles. “I keep forgetting that you don’t know this version of Hell’s Kitchen. Matt’s probably at your office. Try the roof. He spends a lot of time up there.”

“Thanks,” Foggy says. He stands. “I’ll just look for him there and then we’ll come right—wait. _My_ office?”

As it turns out, Foggy has an office in this version of Hell’s Kitchen. Here, he is every bit the reputable, earnest lawyer that he always meant to be but never quite became. Here, he shares a law firm with his best friend. Nelson and Murdock; Matt’s subconscious even let Foggy have his name first.

Here, Matt is out from under the thumb of corporate law, and his vigilantism is appreciated by some and scorned by others, but nonetheless exists legally within the city. Here, Matt is-

Happy, maybe.

He seems happy, at least, when he tilts his head toward Foggy and smiles as Foggy lets himself up to the rooftop. He’s wearing the Daredevil costume—minus the mask, thank God, Foggy’s not sure if he could deal with talking to the horns—and his feet dangle over the edge of the building.

Matt’s hair is shorter here, his face has earned a few more lines, but it’s undeniably _Matt_ who’s shooting Foggy that warm, fragile smile.

“Hey,” Matt says.

“Hey,” Foggy says. He leans against the ledge that Matt’s sitting on and then makes the mistake of looking down. _Shit,_ this is high up, and Matt is just dangling his legs like a toddler perched on the kitchen counter. ‘Man Without Fear’ indeed.

“Is there something wrong?” Matt says.

“Why do you ask?” Foggy says carefully. Maybe Matt has figured this out after all…?

But no, Matt only shrugs and says, “Your heartrate is up more than it usually is after climbing those stairs. You smell different.”

“You smelling me, Murdock?” Foggy says, nudging his shoulder against Matt’s.

Matt laughs, and Foggy _aches_ because he can see just how easy it would be to fall into limbo with Matt. How easy it would be to get swept up into Matt’s grandiose, false reality.

But that’s not what Foggy _wants_. And he’s pretty sure it’s not what Matt wants either. Sure, maybe Matt could be content to stay here if Foggy let him—though, judging by the brief and tragic history of Daredevil that Ben gave Foggy, that doesn’t seem likely—but Matt wouldn’t want _this_. He wouldn’t want to spend his time fighting for justice in a fantasy, not when there are _real people_ who need his help.

“I wish you wouldn’t do this to yourself,” Foggy says. “Let the record show that I’m officially _really_ concerned about you, buddy.”

Matt’s forehead wrinkles in confusion. “Is this about the Jabroni case? Look, I know it’s a new direction for our firm, but I really think-”

“No, it’s not about…whatever that is,” Foggy says. “I don’t even want to know what you’re doing to our imaginary firm. I…God, I love you, but— _Jesus_ , Matt. Sometimes you can be really fucking selfish.”

“Foggy…”

And even though Matt hasn’t spoken to this version of Foggy for years, he gives a little sigh when he says Foggy’s name: like this is an argument they’ve had a dozen times before.

And God, Foggy still hasn’t forgiven Karen, but he suddenly knows exactly what she was trying to save him from, what cycle she was trying to pull him out of. This cycle of helping and then hurting inside that Foggy can’t help but get caught up in when he’s around people who burn with passion like Matt and Karen do. This cycle that—despite the fact that it might be slowly killing him—Foggy will step back into every time.

“I know this isn’t your fault,” Foggy breathes, swiping angrily at his eyes. “And maybe I’m a shit friend for it, but I’m so fucking pissed at you right now. Except that that doesn’t even matter, does it? Because this is just a—a blip in the cycle of righteous bullshit that we do! This stupid fucking cycle where you and Karen _lie_ to me and yourselves—where you pretend that everything is fine when it _isn’t._ This stupid cycle where my friends hide their ghosts and all their other shit from me, and then we crash and burn and end up _here_!”

Matt gapes at him. Whatever script it is that he and this world’s Foggy usually go by, Foggy’s diatribe obviously isn’t a part of it. “Foggy, what are you _talking_ about? What do you mean, ‘end up here?’”

“In _limbo_ , Matt,” Foggy says harshly. It’s so obviously not the right way to start this conversation, but shit, Foggy doesn’t know what else to _do_ anymore.

“Ah,” Matt says, as it everything has suddenly become clear. “You’ve been talking to Ben, haven’t you? You know…You know the Fisk job was _years_ ago. It was a hard time, but I told you I’d protect us and I did. We’re in reality now; we’re _fine._ ”

Foggy _really_ wants to yell at him some more, but…he knows that isn’t how he’s going to convince Matt. Matt is fast, he’s vicious, and he’s theatrical—no one stands a chance of facing him head on. Matt simply can’t _process_ someone’s directness when it contradicts his own will. Unstoppable force, meet immovable object.

Foggy takes a deep breath, then another. He leans his elbows against the ledge of Matt’s roof, and thinks about how to best play this. Finally, he says, “Do you remember how we first met?”

“…Yes. At Landman and Zack, when you and Karen were first investigating me.”

Matt speaks warily, aware of the fact that Foggy has a point he’s circumnavigating, but having no choice but to play along for the moment.

“And are you aware that Karen made a file on you while we were looking into you?” Foggy asks.

Matt’s lip twitches sharply downward. “I’d…assumed. Neither of you ever said anything about it.”

“We wanted you to trust us. But maybe hiding the file from you wasn’t the best way to do that. Matt, when…when Karen first showed me that file, we talked for a long time about whether we wanted you on our crew,” Foggy says.

This is another thing that Foggy thinks Matt had assumed, but not known for sure. Judging by the utter lack of skepticism on Matt’s face, Foggy would be right.

“Didn’t like the idea of a blind architect?” Matt says dryly.

“You know that’s not it,” Foggy says. “Come on, Matt, we never questioned whether you would be _good_ at it—fuck, you were a damn prodigy. We just didn’t know…”

“Didn’t know _what_?”

“If you’d be able to handle it,” Foggy says softly. “Look, the people in this business are fucked up, but we take care of ourselves. Or we try to anyway. You…weren’t doing that when we met. You were a loner. You had a history of depression, aggression, an obsessive personality. You sent up a _million_ red flags, but like heartless idiots, we ignored them because we knew you’d be _good_.”

“And I was,” Matt says simply. “We won, didn’t we?”

“Ben once said that there’s no such thing as winners and losers in something like this,” Foggy says. That was…God, it can’t have been more than a few weeks ago. How long have they even been in this dream? Not more than six hours could’ve passed in reality, but Foggy feels as though he’s aged _years._

Matt actually _has_ aged years. Foggy can see a scar on his neck that wasn’t there in the last level of the dream. What happened to Matt since then? Is it just a shaving cut, or something else—something that this world’s Foggy would had fussed and cried over before Matt had leapt back into the fray?

Matt purses his lips. “I don’t know why you’re even bringing this up. I gave up extraction after the Fisk job.”

“I’m bringing it up, because those red flags I’m talking about?” Foggy says. “They exist for a _reason_ , Matt. Because people who have those issues and don’t deal with them—you don’t let people like that share dreams! They bring in ghosts; they get _lost._ They lose track of reality. Which is what you’re doing right _now,_ and you can’t even see it.”

Matt smiles wryly. “So that’s the closing argument, is it? I have depression, therefore I must be dreaming?”

“That’s not what I’m saying and you know it,” Foggy says, trying not to cry any more than he already has. Trying to keep his courtroom composure and _failing,_ because this isn’t just another mark he’s trying to convince. It’s _Matt_. “Sloppy counterargument, counselor.”

“I could say the same to you.”

Foggy is running out of trump cards. But that’s because he’s playing the game like a lawyer: using calculated, logical moves. It’s the same reason Ben hasn’t been able to get through to Matt.

Because the only way to approach a man called Daredevil? Is to do the completely unexpected.

“Then prove it,” Foggy says. “Prove that this is real, Matt, and tell me how you _know_ that you’re not dreaming right now.”

Matt’s lips thin. He pulls his billy clubs out of his holster and reassembles them into his cane. He feels the Braille markings he inscribed there.

“It’s the same message as always,” Matt says. “Not that I needed to check. I can always tell when I’m dreaming, Foggy. You know that.”

“No,” Foggy corrects him. “You can always tell when you’re in _someone else’s_ dream. But not when _you’re_ the architect, Matt. Not in limbo.”

“You’re—you’re asking me to prove that my world is real,” Matt bites out. He hops down from the ledge to fully face Foggy. “But from where I’m standing, the burden of proof is on _you._ If you’re going to prosecute me, at least have the decency to prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt.”

And here it is: Foggy’s chance to play his only wild card. “I can prove it.”

“How?”

This is going to suck, probably because it’s precisely the sort of plan that Matt would have thought of. Foggy almost wishes that he didn’t have to disrupt this reality. Because here, he _finally_ has the time to reach for the back of Matt’s neck and run his thumb against the skin there. Here, there are no interruptions: in limbo, this moment could last forever.

As indignant as Matt is right now, he still closes his eyes and leans into Foggy’s touch. Some things—despite the years and layers of subconscious that have separated them both—never change.

But then Foggy breaks the spell and says, “Open your eyes and tell me what you see.”

“Oh, _Jesus—nothing,_ Foggy. The answer is always nothing.”

Matt tries to pull away, but Foggy cuts him off before he can.

“You told me that sometimes you can see while you’re dreaming,” Foggy says desperately. “Matt, if you do this for me, I promise I won’t ever bring it up again. Just please… _please_ try this.”

Matt tilts his head back and, after a moment of thought, gives a long sigh.

“ _Fine_ ,” he says. “But only because you’re actually starting to worry me with all this. And because…because you’ve been patient with me while I settled back into our practice. I owe it to you to give back some of that patience—even if you _are_ being an enormous asshole right now.”

“Did Matt Murdock just offer to be _patient?_ What _has_ gone down here in the last few years?”

Matt laughs, opens his eyes, and then—freezes. “F-Foggy…?”

“Matt,” Foggy breathes. “Matt you—you can see me right now, can’t you?”

Matt doesn’t need to answer him. Because Foggy may not have known Matt before he was blinded, but Foggy knows _this_ : just what Matt’s face looks like when he’s astonished. It’s in the way his face flushes, the way his head tilts as if he’s trying to capture every sensory nuance of a moment, the way his jaw goes slack.

It’s the same expression that Matt had on his face when he first attempted architecture—it’s the same look he had when Foggy once praised Matt’s colors in a dream.

Matt runs a shaking hand down Foggy’s face. “This…this doesn’t mean anything. I got hit with a ray gun last week, maybe that-”

“A ray gun? Okay, if you didn’t know you were dreaming before-”

“Don’t,” Matt whispers. “Please don’t joke about this. Just…this has to be real, doesn’t it? You’re right _here._ I can _see_ you.”

Foggy closes his eyes. He hates himself so much for this: for the brittle hope dancing in Matt’s voice and for the aching realization that lurks beneath it. Foggy hates doing this to Matt, hates tearing down the world that Matt has so carefully constructed for them. But Foggy wants them to build that world _together,_ and they can’t do that right now—not until they finally get back _home._

Foggy puts a hand over the one Matt has on his cheek. “I’m right here. But you can’t actually see me, Matt. This is all in your head. If you could see me, you’d be able to tell me what color my hair is.”

“Blond. It’s blond.”

Foggy smiles. He wonders if Matt can feel how it trembles when he touches Foggy’s face. “There’s a million shades of blond. Be more specific: dishwater, strawberry, platinum?”

“I don’t…I-I don’t…”

“You don’t know because you’ve never seen my hair, Matt,” Foggy says gently. “You only know it’s blond because I’ve told you that. Your subconscious is just trying to fill in the gaps.”

“This…this isn’t real,” Matt gasps, face crumpling. “This-this is…”

Matt’s hand falls and he presses his face into Foggy’s shoulder: a star collapsing in on itself in grief. Foggy holds Matt close as Matt cries into his chest, as Matt smears snot and tears into a shirt that doesn’t exist in reality. Foggy rubs his hand along Matt’s back, murmuring meaningless words of comfort to him.

Foggy’s not sure for how long they stand there. Long enough for the sun to set and for a crick to form in Foggy’s neck—and then Matt finally pulls away.

“I…I wanted this so badly,” Matt croaks, voice still brimming with tears. “I wanted to think that things could be different.”

“I know,” Foggy says. “And they can be, Matt, just—back home. Not while you waste away in limbo and leave me to dump that gorgeous bod of yours on my couch. I’ll do it, you know—it’d make a great decoration, really liven up the place.”

Matt huffs out something that, in some other universe, could perhaps approximate a laugh.

“Guess I have to come back then,” Matt says, “if only to save my body from your terrible couch.”

“If you’re going to keep complaining about my couch, you’re buying me a new one, Murdock.”

“Maybe I will.”

Matt’s quiet for a long moment. Maybe he’s listening to the city: probably a difficult habit to break even when he now knows that the people who actually need help are far away from this place. Matt runs his fingers over and over the Braille of his cane, a desperate bid to resist the gravity-like pull of limbo.

Foggy’s familiar with the feeling—but he knows what’s real now that he’s found Matt again.

“Can I tell you something?” Matt finally asks.

“What better time than now?” Foggy says. “We’re all—kind of—alive, and attack from ninja is no longer imminent. Ask away.”

Matt startles, then actually _snorts_ in laughter.

Foggy squints. “ _Is_ attack from ninja imminent? If it is, so help me God, I will kick your white ninja ass, Murdock.”

“No—no ninja attacks that I can sense,” Matt says with a grin. “Sorry, you just—you reminded me that you _really_ haven’t been around to see what’s happened here.”

The grin slips off Matt’s face as soon as he realizes what he just said, which—yeah. Matt’s been living a life parallel to reality for years, and is only just realizing how many of the moments he’s carved out for himself here haven’t actually been shared with anyone. Foggy would be quick to sober up too.

“A lot happened here,” Matt says, leaning against the ledge. “Most of it—not great, if I’m being honest. But I had some good moments. With you, and Karen…mostly ones I imagined, I guess.”

“They still matter,” Foggy says. He bites his lip, trying to think about how best to phrase this. All of the articulacy he’s gained through forgery doesn’t translate into voicing something as complicated as this. Dreams aren’t always meant to be described and neither are the paradoxes they contain.

“I mean, yeah, this technically isn’t real,” Foggy tries. “But so what? So you’re going to come home and make weird inside jokes about the weird ninja attacks that apparently went down here. And Karen and I won’t know what the hell you’re talking about, and it’ll be awkward for all of us. But then you’ll _explain_ it, Matt, and it’ll be okay.”

“I…I can do that.”

“Good. And hey, it’s not like…You didn’t waste your time down here, you know. If it was what you needed, it’s what you needed. Besides,” Foggy says, looking out at the violent oranges and reds and pinks of the setting sun, “you created a hell of a world here, Matt. If we could bottle your dreams…”

Matt sniffs, shakes his head. “No one would want them.”

“I would,” Foggy says firmly. “I’d want them.”

Matt’s face crumples again, but he doesn’t cry this time. He only sniffs and nods before finally managing to say, “Y—yours too.”

Foggy lifts a hand to card it through Matt’s hair. And while Foggy normally might’ve hesitated before doing this, here, in a dream, it’s easy to lean in and press a kiss to Matt’s forehead. Here, he finally has the time to do so. It’s clearly a move that Foggy needs to replicate in reality, if only to once again see the look of astonishment that’s appeared on Matt’s face—as if _Foggy_ is the first dream that Matt ever built.

Foggy threads his fingers through Matt’s and squeezes Matt’s hand tightly. “I think I interrupted you. You said that you wanted to tell me something, before we got all tragic-yet-cute there. I still don’t know how you manage that combination, you know.”

“Trade secret,” Matt murmurs, resting his head against Foggy’s shoulder again. “I’m not staying here. I can’t stay here knowing that there are people in reality who need my help. But I guess I…I wanted you—or, just, _someone_ —to know that I…I mattered here.”

This is something that Foggy already knows—will always know, because Foggy can’t imagine any universe where Matt doesn’t matter—but he also realizes that it’s something Matt needed to say aloud. That even though Matt’s ghosts dragged him down into this place, even though he got lost—who he was in those moments still mattered.

“I know,” Foggy says. “And you matter outside this place too. Hey, you might not get to beat up legendary villains like Leap Frog or _Stilt-Man_ there, but there’s still a place for you back home: with me, and Karen, and everyone else.”

Matt nods into Foggy’s neck. He clears his throat, pulls himself away—except for his hand around Foggy’s—and says, “Okay. Then let’s go home.”


	7. Epilogue

“It’s guilt, isn’t it?”

“…How did you-”

“Because,” Ben says, “even if you can avoid guilt in real life, it’ll always crop up in dreams. Although it seems _you_ can’t even avoid it in reality. I thought this is why you have a priest.”

Matt chuckles. “Always the reporter, aren’t you, Ben? You know my priest?”

“Maybe. I looked into you when Karen offered me the job, you know. The identity of The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen would make for a hell of a story.”

It’s an empty threat—in fact, it’s not even a threat. Simply a statement of fact and not anything that Ben will ever act on. He, and the rest of Hell’s Kitchen, actually believe in Matt now that they know the true story behind the night of the bombings.

It’s…nice, to be believed in.

“I hear they’re calling him Daredevil now,” Matt says with a smirk.

Ben tosses a balled-up newspaper at him, throwing his hands up when Matt neatly dodges it.

“You’re welcome for that, by the way,” Ben says. “You don’t know how long it took me to convince my editor that ‘Daredevil’ was a halfway decent nickname. And you’re avoiding the subject. Word to the wise, that doesn’t work too well with reporters.”

Matt plays with the strap of his cane, then shifts his fingers to rub them against the Braille on the handle. A habit he’s developed since limbo and not one that anyone’s tried to ease him out of. They all have their coping mechanisms.

“Of course I feel guilty,” Matt says quietly. “You’d realized we were in limbo long before I did, and I didn’t believe you. You could’ve been out of there years earlier if it weren’t for me. I’m…I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Ben says. His voice is soft, but his manner of speaking is as clear and precise as ever: simply stating the facts. Matt likes that about Ben. There’s no pretension there, no secrets. He can trust the things that Ben says to be true.

He’s trying to trust the things that Foggy, Karen, and Claire say too. It’s a work in progress.

“Matt,” Ben says. “If you think that I would have left you behind, then you don’t really know me. Believe it or not, I might not have gotten out at _all_ if it weren’t for you. Yeah, we stayed lost for a bit. Yeah, it was a fantasy. But it wasn’t a bad one.”

“So during all those years,” Matt says, trying to figure out how to phrase the question he keeps asking himself, “you never…you never wished that we hadn’t brought that job to you?”

Ben shrugs. It’s only a flicker of movement in Matt’s senses, but it’s enough, and Ben knows that.

“In my book? There’s no use in wishing otherwise,” Ben says. “What happened during the Fisk job, happened. Those of us left behind can’t do anything but try to move on and do better.”

“And…” Matt swallows heavily. He thinks that he suspects the answer, but he wants to know. He needs to know for _sure_. It’s the same learned behavior that causes him to run a finger over the Braille on his cane. “Are we? Moving on, doing better?”

“We’re doing our best,” Ben says simply. “That’s all anyone can ever do.”

Matt sags in relief. “I think you might be right. Thank you.”

“Anytime…I mean that, Matt. Not many people have gone down as deep as we have. Sometimes it helps to-”

“Talk? Foggy already made me promise to do that. Though I will have you know that I didn’t _just_ come here to talk about guilt,” Matt says, lips twitching into a self-deprecating grin that he knows will make Ben chuckle. “Foggy and Karen wanted you to know that the invitation is still on the table.”

“Nah,” Ben says. “After the Fisk job, Karen baked me more recovery casserole than one man could hope to eat in a lifetime. And, to be honest? I’m taking a leaf out of Claire’s book—thinking of taking Doris out of town for a bit. Taking a break from all this. This little occasion will just have to belong to you three. Go on. Make sure they don’t eat all the casserole before you get there.”

Matt nods, but hesitates once he reaches the door. “Ben? Thanks. Again.”

“Like I said, Matt,” Ben says, nodding before he turns back to his notes. “Anytime.”

 

***

  
“You’re late!” Foggy says as he ushers Matt into the apartment. Matt could smell the stewed tomatoes, hissing onions, and cheese even before he entered the building, but now the aroma washes over him fully. Matt smiles. He listens for Karen puttering around in the kitchen, runs his finger over the Braille of his cane, and toes his shoes off.

“Just stopped by Ben’s office after work,” Matt says. “Talked about a few things.”

Foggy nods, accepting the vagueness for now. He’ll probably push more later, when Matt is sleepy and full of food and more susceptible to Foggy’s prying and careful words—but Matt can’t bring himself to mind that.

“Sit down, Murdock,” Foggy says, steering Matt toward the kitchen table. “And tell us all about your last day at L&Z. Did you storm out of Landman’s office? _Please_ tell me you left by backflipping out of a window.”

Matt laughs. “Foggy—I put in my notice two weeks ago, I didn’t _storm out._ There wasn’t any drama.”

“ _No_ drama from Matt Murdock?” Karen teases.

“I don’t believe it for a second,” Foggy says, pressing a kiss to Matt’s forehead before sitting in the chair next to his.

And this— _this_ is how Matt knows that this isn’t a dream. Because, for all the things he dreamed up in limbo, Matt could have never imagined something like this for himself. He bows his head, smiles, and takes Foggy’s hand in his own. He rubs his face against it, tries to make something that approximates eye contact when he presses a kiss to Foggy’s hand.

The sound of Foggy’s lips sliding against his teeth as he smiles is nearly deafening. Again—Matt can’t quite bring himself to mind.

“Dinner is ready,” Karen says, putting the casserole on the table. “But first…”

Her heart races as she turns toward Foggy, and Foggy’s spikes in return.

Matt frowns. “What’s going on?”

“Your super senses ruining our surprise, that’s what,” Foggy says. He stands and gropes around the living room for a moment before bringing a small package to Matt. “It’s a present. A ‘fuck the man, you just metaphorically backflipped out of L&Z’s window’ sort of thing. Just wait ‘til you run your feelers over this baby.”

Matt peels off the rough packaging material and obliges. He groans at what he finds there: a square made of smooth metal with raised letters, accompanied by the bright smell of brass. “Foggy, we talked about this.”

“We did, but Karen and I couldn’t help ourselves. Nelson and Murdock, man! Attorneys at law! Now we’ve got our sign, and our lovely business manager-” Foggy gestures proudly at Karen “-is getting in touch with that realtor you know. We’re _officially_ almost ready to be in business. All we need are clients.”

Matt turns toward Foggy and lowers his glasses slightly so Foggy can see the hopefully unimpressed look in Matt’s eyes. “Clients and, for you, a license to _practice_ law.”

“Technically,” Foggy says, “I do have a license.”

“One that’s _earned,”_ Matt reminds him, trying his best to sound stern around the smile spreading across his face. “No forgeries.”

“It’s only a temporary forgery!” Foggy protests, for at least the tenth time this month. “Just until I can get my real one.”

Before Matt can argue the point, Karen pointedly says, “We’ll work it out later. In the meantime, we are letting my celebratory casserole get cold, and my grandmother is probably turning in her grave as we speak.”

The casserole is technically to celebrate Matt leaving Landman and Zack, but the occasion is more of an amalgamation of every celebration they’ve been too busy to even think about since Fisk job. It’s a _we have a law firm, kind of, except it’s technically an illegal one_ celebration _,_ and a _Fisk has fled the country, possibly due to an existential crisis, or maybe just to expand upon his criminal empire, but at least everyone knows his secrets now_ celebration _,_ or a _we almost died and one us actually_ did _die, but we’re okay now—or as okay as we can be, when we all so badly need therapy_ celebration.

“Hey,” Matt says, nudging Foggy with his shoulder while Karen scoops out portions of casserole. Matt wants to simply enjoy the celebration, but he knows there’s one more thing he has to ask. It’s another thing that he technically knows the answer to, but he has to worry at it like he does the message on his cane. Foggy has been patient with him about things like that, since limbo. He’s patient with Matt like Matt sometimes isn’t sure he deserves.

“Yeah?” Foggy says.

“So, Nelson and Murdock, huh?” Matt says. “You’re sure about this? I don’t want you to…Just because this is what I want doesn’t mean that we have to do it.”

 _Just because you saw this in my subconscious—just because I not only want this but_ need _this—doesn’t mean that you have to do this, if it’s not what you want._

Foggy only shakes his head. He understands the underlying questions. It’s what makes him a good forger—and what _will_ make him a good lawyer, once he gets his damn license.

“This is what I want too, Matty,” Foggy says. “I’m pretty burnt out on dream sharing, if I’m being honest-”

“You can say that again,” Karen mutters.

“-And this is what feels right.” Foggy puffs out his chest. “I’ve always wanted to be a rich, law-abiding do-gooder.”

Matt snorts. “You’re only one out of three at the moment.”

“Eh,” Foggy shrugs. “You take what you can get.”

They eat casserole until they’re stuffed, drink beer, and help Foggy study for the bar exam until inebriation and exhaustion turns it into a game of throwing flash cards at him, and Matt thinks—yes. He will definitely take this.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Graphics for "I Sat and Dreamed at the Foot of Your Bed"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6527398) by [ORiley42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ORiley42/pseuds/ORiley42)




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